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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Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry—while not strictly a space museum—has an impressive collection on, more or less, permanent exhibit. And they’ve got the Apollo 8 command module on display. As space buff’s know, Apollo 8 was the most dramatic leap in an otherwise step-by-step NASA program to reach the moon. No person had been [...]

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In Washington D.C. (and with free admission!) this is the ultimate place to see historic artifacts. The museum gets “first refusal” on everything that NASA discards. But, in addition to such items as Freedom 7, the Apollo 11 command module and a Viking lander, the museum also has Soviet artifacts on display, including Alexi Leonov’s [...]

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Located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio (1100 Spaatz Street), this venue has an impressive collection of space items. Space exhibits include a Mercury spacecraft (genuine but unflown), a Gemini capsule (used for testing, but unflown) and the VERY flown Apollo 15 command module, Endeavor. An unusual device on exhibit, the Marquardt Space [...]

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You’ll never complete your mission to visit all the flown Apollo command modules without a trip here. They’ve got the Skylab II spacecraft.  This was the first American mission to our first space station — Skylab. The crew, headed by Pete Conrad,  fixed the damaged solar panels of the station and stayed for 28 days. [...]

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This museum has a full-sized replica of SpaceShipOne, the private space plane that won the x-Prize in 2004. (The actual SpaceShipOne can be seen at the National Air & Space Museum.) The museum also has space suits and other flown items. It is in Alamogordo, NM Phone: 505-437-2840

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In Queens, New York (one of New York City’s boroughs), you can climb into a Mercury capsule mock-up (Glenn’s Friendship 7). Or you can look at two spectacular rockets: a genuine Atlas rocket with a replica Mercury capsule on top, and a Gemini-Titan (the Titan II rocket is real and the Gemini capsule is a [...]

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