Museums Archive

Gus Grissom was the 2nd American in space. This museum in Grissom’s hometown of Mitchell, Indiana includes Gus’ Gemini capsule, the Molly Brown, suspended from the ceiling. Also on display: Grissom’s spacesuit, gloves and helmet from his Gemini mission and the flag that draped his coffin at Arlington National Cemetery. The museum is in Spring [...]

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This is the place; where NASA controls its manned space missions. This place is an active facility, and home to so much history. What you must do is take the tour. You can visit the historic Mission Control Center and the new, operating one. Then there’s the Astronaut Gallery, which boasts the world’s greatest collection [...]

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Located at Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport (downtown), this is a free exhibit which includes a tribute to the Mercury 13 women—women who passed the tests to become Mercury astronauts, but were denied astronaut status…because the United States wasn’t ready. (The Soviet Union was; they launched the first women in space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963.) The [...]

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The ship Intrepid is itself a primary recovery vessel for NASA. It was the primary recovery ship for Scott Carpenter’s Mercury flight, Aurora 7. When the craft landed hundred’s of miles off target, the Intrepid sent out two helicopters to search for the craft and astronaut. Both were successfully recovered. A replica of Aurora 7 [...]

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Ok, so it’s not strictly a museum. Yeah, it’s the actual working facility from which the United States launches most of its rockets and all of its manned space missions. But they’ve got an amazing collection of treats for the space-buff. There’s the rocket garden, with a slew of (mostly real) vintage rockets: the Saturn [...]

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This venue has some things worth seeing: a full-scale mockup of Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 spacecraft (booster and all) outside…with an interactive program that tells the story of Shepard’s ground-breaking (and shaking!) flight! Inside, you’ll find more about Shepard, and about another New Hampshire native, Christa McAuliffe—the teacher-in-space who lost her life in the Challenger [...]

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With emphasis on local content, this Michigan museum features artifacts and stories of thirteen astronauts hailing from the state. They also have beatiful, large (albeit much smaller than life-sized) models of a Gemini spacecraft, and a Shuttle. It’s located at 1250 Weiss Street, Frankenmuth MI 48734. The phone is 989-652-8005. It’s open Monday to Saturday [...]

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Part of Michigan’s “Air Zoo”, the Michigan Space Science Center offers a number of interesting space artifacts and exhibits. Among the artifacts are engines from a Saturn V launch vehicle (an F1 and a J2 engine), a Gemini training simulator, and the spacesuit of the final commander of the Mir space station as well as [...]

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A small museum worth seeing if you find yourself at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport. There’s a small case commemorating Milwaukee’s contribution to an experiment flown aboard the shuttle Columbia in 1986. But the important stuff is in a case dedicated to Jim Lovell, who grew up in Milwaukee. They’ve got two items brought to [...]

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This Seattle museum features an exhibit called “Space: Exploring the New Frontier”. With video, artifacts and interactive experiences, the exhibit is more than worth checking out. Artifacts includes: an actual mars Viking Lander, a flown Russian spacecraft, and moon rocks brought back to earth by Apollo 12. A great overview of the whole history of [...]

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