Monuments to the commercial space age are getting a new home at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, just around the corner from historic relics of government-driven space success, like the Mercury Friendship 7 capsule that carried John Glenn to orbit.
The DC museum opened five galleries on Monday—the second of three phases of reopenings since renovations began in 2018. One of those is the new Futures in Space exhibit, which includes hardware from a who’s-who of commercial space players, a look at future Mars habitats, and a handful of interactive exhibits—including one that lets visitors step into the shoes of space execs.
“We are in the golden age of space, and commercial spaceflight—as revealed in this gallery—is a huge part of that story,” Chris Browne, the director of the museum, said at a preview of the galleries last week.
Building for the future: Curators were charged with building an exhibit for the future, but began the process at least five years before the gallery would open its doors—a tall order for the fast moving commercial space industry. To stay relevant, staff focused on strategic questions, including:
- Why should humanity explore space?
- What should we do there?
- Who should make those decisions?
“It was a question of what is happening right now, keeping up with the headlines, and what seemed likely to happen over the last few years,” Matt Shindell, the Smithsonian’s curator of space history, told Payload.
The highlights: Here are a small number of the artifacts displayed in the hall:
- Sian Proctor’s spacesuit, worn during the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission
- A Rocket Lab Rutherford rocket engine;
- A model of a Blue Origin New Shepard crew capsule (though Blue has promised the museum the real deal once they’re done flying it, Shindell said);
- A test model of Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lunar lander;
- A SORATO lunar rover from ispace Japan.
The exhibit also includes hands-on experiences, including:
- A model of a SpaceX Falcon 9 grid fin, complete with real-time air flow (right next to the real thing that flew in 2017);
- A “choose your own adventure” style game focusing on the decisions companies must make to stay profitable, while aiming for big goals like lunar tourism or Mars landings.
The in-crowd: The Smithsonian has a long history of working with space primes, but had to build relationships with new players to collect items for the gallery, Shindell said. To do so, the Smithsonian hired Emily Margolis to serve as curator for contemporary spaceflight—a new position created amid the redesign.
Still, the staff had to make some tough decisions when trying to fit a representative cross section of industry into a single gallery, which inevitably meant some companies were left out. Shindell noted, however, that more players are expected to be featured during updates.
“We still want to make relationships with all of the other companies as well as collect from them, and we do see this space as very updatable, so as new things happen we want to be able to represent those new things, new companies,” Shindell said.
Then and now: The focus on commercial space doesn’t mean curators ignored government history. One of the most striking cases in the hall shows just how far spaceflight has come through the juxtaposition of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s training pressure suit and Katya Echazaretta’s Blue Origin flight suit that she wore as a commercial astronaut—and the first Mexican-born woman in space.
“They tell two very different stories and those stories are somewhat told by the suits themselves,” Shindell said. “Putting them side by side we think was a great way of telling the story of what’s happened since the space race began.”
What’s next: The renovations will conclude next year to coincide with the museum’s 50th anniversary. Two more space-focused galleries are expected to open on July 1, 2026:
- At Home in Space will look at the history of people continuously living in space.
- RTX Living in the Space Age will examine how space tech has improved life on Earth.
