National Air and Space Museum to reveal more renovated galleries on July 28
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From John Glenn's Friendship 7 to Blue Origin's New Shepard, space capsules and more are set to return to or debut on display with the opening of five "reimagined" galleries at the National Air and Space Museum this summer.As part of a still on-going, seven-year renovation of the museum's flagship building in Washington, the Smithsonian has announced that it is ready to premiere more of its exhibitions following the reveal of eight of its halls on the building's west end in 2022. The next launch, scheduled for July 28, includes two galleries highlighting some of the most historic and newest space artifacts in the national collection.The Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, which visitors will first see after proceeding through the museum's newly-redesigned Jefferson Drive entrance along the National Mall showcases some of the museum's most iconic objects, including Glenn's Mercury spacecraft and an Apollo lunar module configured to appear as Apollo 11's "Eagle" looked in 1969 when it landed the first humans on the moon.
The displays in Milestones were the first to be redesigned in 2016 — in time for the museum's 40th anniversary — but then the hall was closed and the artifacts were removed again so that the area itself could be renovated.Milestones' exhibits also include a North American X-15 rocket plane, the Gemini 4 capsule from which astronaut Ed White performed the first American spacewalk in 1965 and a moon rock that the public can touch.
Also opening on July 28 will be the new "Futures in Space" exhibition, which takes over the location of the relocated "How Things Fly," next to the Milestones of Flight Hall. "Futures" will display artifacts new to the building to address topics like "who decides who goes to space?" and "why do we go?" Debuting with Futures in Space are a Virgin Galactic "RocketMotorTwo" engine that powered pilots Mark Stucky and Frederick "CJ" Sturckow into space on a suborbital test flight on board the SpaceShipTwo "VSS Unity" in 2018 and an aluminum grid fin that helped SpaceX land a Falcon 9 rocket's first stage in 2017.Also new is a mockup of Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule, a pressurized cabin used to fly cargo and clients beyond the boundary separating Earth and space. Jeff Bezos, the company's billionaire founder and its first passenger, has pledged to replace the replica with a flown capsule once it has retired from flying.
Other areas of the National Air and Space Museum reopening at the same time include three aviation-themed halls — "Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight," "World War I: The Birth of Military Aviation" and the Allan and Shelley Holt Innovations Gallery — and the the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater.The remaining eight galleries still under renovation are scheduled to open on July 1, 2026, the 50th anniversary of the National Air and Space Museum and in time for the United States' 250th anniversary. Among them are the interactive "At Home in Space," which will engage visitors in how humans live and work in space and venture beyond Earth orbit, and "RTX Living in the Space Age Hall," revealing how innovations in space technology have transformed our lives on Earth.Likewise, the "National Science Foundation Discovering Our Universe" exhibition will show how advancements in astronomical tools changed our understanding of the universe.
Also opening next year, wrapping up the renovations, are the "Textron How Things Fly," "Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air" and "Modern Military Aviation" galleries, as well as the "Flight and the Arts Center."Free timed-entry passes are required to visit. Passes for the July 28 opening and beyond will be available on the National Air and Space Museum website June 13.
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"For those who have supported us, we'd really like to apologize," Hakamada said, adding that ispace is committed to learning from its failures for future flights. "We have to continue on our mission to have moon exploration by [the] Japanese." Resilience stood 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) tall and weighs about 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) when fully fueled. It's the second of ispace's Hakuto-R lunar landers, which explains the name of its current flight: Hakuto-R Mission 2. Hakuto is a white rabbit in Japanese mythology. The ispace folks first used the name for their entry in the Google Lunar X Prize, which offered $20 million to the first private team to soft-land a probe on the moon and have it accomplish some basic exploration tasks. The Prize ended in 2018 without a winner, but ispace carried on with its lunar hardware and ambitions. (The "R" in Hakuto-R stands for "reboot.") The company made big strides on Hakuto-R Mission 1, which successfully reached lunar orbit in March 2023. But that spacecraft couldn't stick the landing; it crashed after its altitude sensor got confused by the rim of a lunar crater, which it mistook for the surrounding lunar surface. ispace folded the lessons learned into Hakuto-R Mission 2, which launched on Jan. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Space Coast. That was a moon-mission twofer for SpaceX: Resilience shared the rocket with Blue Ghost, a robotic lander built and operated by the Texas company Firefly Aerospace that carried 10 scientific instruments for NASA via the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Blue Ghost arrived in orbit around the moon on Feb. 13 and landed successfully on March 2, pulling off the second-ever soft lunar touchdown by a private spacecraft. That mission went well from start to finish; the solar-powered Blue Ghost operated on the moon for two weeks as planned, finally going dark on March 16 after the sun set over its landing site. Resilience took a longer, more energy-efficient path to the moon, which featured a close flyby of Earth's nearest neighbor on Feb. 14. The lander arrived in lunar orbit as planned on May 6, then performed a series of maneuvers to shift into a circular path just 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. That set the stage for Thursday's action. Resilience used a series of thruster burns to descend, decelerate and steer its way toward a landing in Mare Frigoris, a vast basaltic plain that lies about 56 degrees north of the lunar equator. But something went wrong when Resilience was just 192 meters above the lunar surface. It's not clear if Resilience was moving faster than expected because of the laser rangefinder data lag, or if that data lag was caused by the probe moving faster than planned, ispace said. "First, we have to figure out the root cause for the phenomenon we observed, and then we have to utilize them into Mission 3 and Mission 4," Hakamada said. If Resilience had succeeded today, it would be just the second soft lunar touchdown for Japan; its national space agency, JAXA, put the SLIM ("Smart Lander for Investigating Moon') spacecraft down safely in January 2024. Today's landing attempt was part of a wave of private lunar exploration, which kicked off with Israel's Beresheet lander mission in 2019. Beresheet failed during its touchdown try, just as ispace's first mission did two years ago. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic had an abortive go in January 2024 with its Peregrine lunar lander, which suffered a crippling fuel leak shortly after launch and ended up crashing back to Earth. A month later, Houston company Intuitive Machines made history with its Odysseus craft, which touched down near the lunar south pole. Odysseus tipped over shortly after touchdown but continued operating for about a week. Its successor, named Athena, also toppled during its lunar touchdown on March 6 — just four days after Blue Ghost hit the gray dirt — with more serious consequences: The probe went dark within a few short hours. Peregrine, Blue Ghost, Odysseus and Athena all carried NASA science payloads. They were supported by the agency's CLPS program, which aims to gather cost-efficient science data ahead of crewed Artemis moon landings, the first of which is slated for 2027. Resilience carried five payloads, but they don't belong to NASA; Hakuto-R Mission 2 is not a CLPS effort. Three of these five are pieces of science gear that aim to help human exploration of the moon: a deep-space radiation probe developed by National Central University in Taiwan; a technology demonstration from the Japanese company Takasago Thermal Engineering Co. designed to produce hydrogen and oxygen from moon water; and an algae-growing experiment provided by Malaysia-based Euglena Co. (Algae could be an efficient food source for lunar settlers someday.) The other two payloads are a commemorative plate based on the "Charter of the Universal Century" from the Japanese sci-fi franchise Gundam and a tiny rover named Tenacious, which was built by ispace's Luxembourg-based subsidiary. Tenacious was designed to roll down onto the surface and collect a small amount of moon dirt, under a contract that ispace signed with NASA back in 2020. The rover carried a payload of its own — "Moonhouse," a tiny replica of a red-and-white Swedish house designed by artist Mikael Gensberg. The rover was supposed to lower the Moonhouse off its front bumper onto the lunar dirt, establishing a colorful artistic homestead in the stark gray landscape. None of that will come to pass, however, now that ispace has confirmed Resilience slammed into the lunar surfance instead of making a delicate four-point "soft landing." Related stories: — What's flying to the moon on ispace's Resilience lunar lander? — Japan's Resilience moon lander aces lunar flyby ahead of historic touchdown try (photo) — Japan's Resilience moon lander arrives in lunar orbit ahead of June 5 touchdown Despite the failed Resilience landing, ispace has big lunar goals. The company plans to launch two moon missions in 2027, Mission 3 and Mission 4, that will use a larger, more capable lander named Apex 1.0. That lander will weigh 2 tons, much larger than Resilience. "We know it's not going to be easy," ispace director and CFO Jumpei Nozaki said during the press conference. "But it's hard. It has some meaning and significance of trying." Nozaki said he and ispace felt extremely sorry to have disappointed the company's 80,000 supporters and stockholders, and were determined to learn from the experimence in the designs fo Mission 3 and Mission 4. Hakamada, when asked by a reporter if he or the team had cried after the failed landing, said it wasn't a time for crying. "Right now, we don't know the cause, so I can't get emotional and cry," he said. "I don't think that's a good idea. The most important thing is to find out the cause for this second failure." Editor's note: This story, originally posted at 5 p.m. ET, was updated at 9:30 p.m ET with new details from ispace's post landing attempt press conference. Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik contributed to this report.
