Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

Today, I spent a few hours at the Air & Space Museum, which is situated on the National Mall.  The various Smithsonian buildings are ideal for very hot days, as they are kept beautifully cool.

It's been a good number of years since I last visited the Air & Space museum, and they change the exhibitions every now and again, so there's always new things to see.  I only got through around a quarter of it.

I touched a piece of the Moon. 


They also have some of the bits of the Hubble Space Telescope that have been brought back to Earth, such as the COSTAR module that was used originally to correct the flaw in the mirror. 

When it launched the shield was solid - but all the black marks you can see are the holes where space debris has gone through the shield.

They don't have the any of the space shuttles here in Washington - it's at the sister museum a few miles away in Virginia.
 

They have test versions of some things, some of which are scale models and others which are full size.  They have a full-size Skylab in the central exhibition hall.

I didn't have time to go to any of the theatre presentations or to the planetarium - I would do that next time, to have a break from wandering around each exhibition.

Some of the exhibitions are clearly aimed at younger audiences, particularly the one that describes how flight works, but the majority are suitable for anybody.