The Museum’s Home Beyond Earth Exhibit About Space Stations Opens June 8
June 6 media preview will feature three astronauts
SEATTLE, May 15, 2024—Only a few more weeks until the June 8 opening of The Museum of Flight’s newest exhibition, Home Beyond Earth. The major new temporary exhibit was conceived and created by the Museum as an immersive experience in three galleries with a focus on the past, present and future of space stations and living in orbit around the Earth. Digital “passport” cards will allow visitors to personalize their journey through the exhibit and build an imagined life in a space station of their choice. Home Beyond Earth will display over fifty artifacts, models, space-flown objects and uniforms, while large digital projections will enliven the galleries with photos, videos and vintage space art. The exhibit runs until Jan. 20, 2025 and is included with Museum general admission.
Today’s new era of spaceflight promises space hotels, orbiting cities and industrial jobs on the Moon. Home Beyond Earth will show how far we have come in realizing this vision and help us ponder the consequences of moving humankind from the home planet.
Fun and thought-provoking programs about space life will complement the exhibition nearly every week throughout the year. Astronauts, space industry leaders, authors and futurists will cover topics ranging from sci-fi and living in space with disabilities, to space archeology and space law. Look for space-related Weekend Family Workshops too.
MEDIA PREVIEW on June 6 with Three Astronauts
Astronauts Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, Soyeon Yi and Chris Stembroski will join the Museum's Home Beyond Earth exhibit developers for questions by the media during a press preview on June 6, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Soyeon Yi was the first—and only—South Korean astronaut; Yi spent ten days onboard the International Space Station during a mission in 2008.
Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger was a Mission Specialist on the STS-131 Space Shuttle Discovery’s 15-day mission to the International Space Station in 2010.
Chris "Hanks" Sembroski served as a Mission Specialist on the SpaceX 3-day Inspiration4, the first all-civilian mission to orbit in 2021.
Home Beyond Earth – Grand Opening
The Grand Opening on June 8 will offer a full day of space-related programs and family activities:
Planetarium Shows
Exhibitors include engineers, artists and entrepreneurs imagining life in space.
Plus:
Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations by Jay Chladek (a book talk and signing)
Let’s Build a Rocket! A Workshop with Jhun Carpio
Aliens: Join the Scientists Searching Space for Extraterrestrial Life by Joalda Morancy (a kids book talk and signing)
Orbital Reef and the Future of Space Stations, a talk with Erika Wagner, Blue Origin Senior Director for Emerging Space Markets
Home Beyond Earth Interactives
Every exhibit visitor can choose to receive a “Passport to Space” digital card to discover what their life could look like on a future space settlement. The visitor's goal is to create their path by choosing a space station to live in, discover how their personal interests lead to jobs needed on future space stations, and finally, see the ambitions and concerns shared between different communities as space settlement becomes more realistic.
Home Beyond Earth Artifacts
Vintage space suits include Christopher Cassidy’s flight suit worn on the International Space Station; Yury Glaskov’s flight suit worn on Salyut 5; Wendy Lawrence’s Mir-era Russian "Penguin" suit; and Ed Gibson’s Skylab flight suit.
Artifacts from Skylab include: a pair of shoes worn in service at the space station, and the training version of a special-made cable cutter devised for the spacewalking astronauts of Skylab 1 so they could free the station’s jammed solar arrays and rescue the mission. There are also samples of the material used to make the sunshade for the space station.
The exhibit includes a test version of a 3D printer called the Refabricator. The Refabricator is a recycler and 3D printer combo about the size of a mini-fridge. A flight unit was launched to the International Space Station in 2018.
Vintage corporate scale models include those of Skylab, USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory, Rockwell International Orbital Habitat Laboratory Cutaway, and the Boeing Nuclear Power Space Base
Astronauts feel more at home beyond Earth when they can sip hot drinks from the rim of a cup, something that was impossible before the Space Cup. The Space Cup’s specific design uses known geometry, gathered in prior International Space Station research, to direct fluids (espresso) to the lips of the user in microgravity.
Image: This fictional toroidal (doughnut-shaped) "space colony" illustrated by Rick Guidice, was born out of an art program at NASA’s Ames Research Center in the 1970s. Image will be on view in Home Beyond Earth. Image credit NASA.
