After seven years of work and nearly $1 billion, the Smithsonian has completed the renovation of the National Air and Space Museum’s flagship building in Washington, DC.
On October 30, the museum debuted its last-to-open spaceflight exhibition, returning home with a gallery dedicated to establishing a spacefaring civilization. Curator Jennifer Levasseur led a virtual tour of the gallery, introducing the new space.
Inside the New Exhibition
“Welcome to ‘At Home in Space’!” said curator Jennifer Levasseur. “This is the story of long-duration spaceflight in the last few decades. We generally call it ‘reaching orbit.'”
Levasseur described the exhibition as the preparation story and the space shuttle story. She explained that it highlights the journey to achieving over 25 years of long-duration spaceflight experience and human capacity to live on the International Space Station, while also pointing toward future steps.
Over the past several years, the National Air and Space Museum has introduced multiple new galleries. These include “Destination Moon” on early US space travel, “Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets” on robotic probes, the “RTX Living in the Space Age Hall” on daily-life technologies, and “Futures in Space” focusing on future approaches to spaceflight.
“At Home in Space,” which follows the similarly themed “Moving Beyond Earth,” immerses visitors in the equipment, spacecraft, and orbital platforms that shifted humanity from visiting space to living in it, while laying the groundwork for upcoming bases on the Moon and Mars.
