Space lovers around the country should start marking their calendars now in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, because they might have the opportunity to see artifacts from the historic Apollo 11 mission at a city museum near them.

The Smithsonian Institution announced on Wednesday that it will send its Apollo 11 Columbia command module, normally housed in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., on a four-city tour in December as part of its new Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission traveling exhibition.

Scheduled to culminate in Seattle, Wash., in 2019, the exhibit will celebrate the historical significance and technological achievement of the Apollo 11 mission while prompting visitors to also contemplate the future of space exploration.

The Apollo programis one of the greatest American achievements, Smithsonian Secretary David J. Skorton told a crowd of press and staff gathered in the restoration hanger at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon and humans first stepped on another celestial body, it changed the way we saw ourselves.

The Columbia command module and the other objects featured in Destination Moon will first go to Space Center Houston in Texas, on Dec. 14. The exhibition will then move to the St. Louis Science Center in Missouri in April 2018 before going to Pittsburgh, Pa., where it will be housed at the Senator John Heinz History Center.

The exhibition will make its final stop in March 2019 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where it will be for the Apollo 11 missions 50th anniversary in July of that year.

Because the command module and other artifacts need to be in a well-regulated environment for conservation purposes, technical requirements, such as room temperature and security measures, as well as the amount of available space dictated which cities would get the exhibition, according to Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) director Myriam Springuel.

SITES has been organizing traveling tours for Smithsonian collections since 1952 and was responsible for arranging Destination Moon.

In addition to ensuring that they would be able to accommodate the exhibition, Springuel and her team wanted to focus on the 215 Smithsonian affiliate museums around the country.

According to its website, the Smithsonian works with affiliate organizations in more than 45 states to share exhibits and collections, collaborate on research projects, and develop educational strategies.

It really meant that we were looking at some of our leading science centers and history museums across the country, Springuel said of selecting the museums that would get the Apollo exhibition.

Houston stood out as a fitting location to launch the tour, since it is home to the Johnson Space Center, where the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) trains astronauts and conducts flight control.

For the exhibitions conclusion, SITES chose a city that Springuel calls the home of space exploration today.

Seattle has emerged as a hub for the commercial space industry, boasting the headquarters of companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX, and the city hosted the first-ever NewSpace conference in June 2016 to highlight the role of aerospace technology in the regions economy.

Its a huge honor for us, and weve been partners with the Smithsonian for a long time, so we really appreciate them deciding that, Museum of Flight president and CEO Douglas King said. Its an incredible historic opportunity to share with people who werent alive what was probably one of the great events [of the 20th century].

Launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft transported astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin Buzz Aldrin on a journey to the moon that lasted a total of eight days and traversed nearly 1 million miles.

The astronauts landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, and an estimated 530 million people watched Armstrong become the first person to stand on the lunar surface, according to NASAs website.

Vaguely resembling a rusty lamp shade, the Columbia command module weighs 13,000 pounds, including its display mount. The capsule that served as the astronauts living quarters is more than 10 feet tall and 13 feet in diameter.

In addition to seeing the module itself unobscured by the plastic that normally encloses it at the National Air and Space Museum, attendees of the Destination Moon exhibit will be able to explore an interactive, three-dimensional model of the Columbia that offers a closer look at its cockpit.

The exhibition will also feature Aldrins helmet and the gloves he wore during the first moon walk, a box that contained the first lunar rock samples ever collected, an ejector plate from one of Apollo 11s engines, and medical and survival kits that were onboard the spacecraft.

National Air and Space Museum senior curator Michael Neufeld was responsible for creating the text that will accompany the exhibits artifacts. He included a timeline of NASAs space program, including the original Mercury and Gemini missions, as well as background on the Cold War and the space race between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

My co-curator [Alan] Needell and I felt it was necessary to set up the context for why America went to the moon in the first place, Neufeld said.

After the traveling tour concludes in September 2019, the Columbia and the other artifacts will return to the National Air and Space Museum for a permanent Destination Moon gallery scheduled to open in 2020.

Smithsonian staff have been organizing that permanent exhibit since 2010, but they decided to launch a traveling exhibition first when they realized that the permanent version would not be ready in time for the Apollo 11 missions 50th anniversary.

While the region will not be involved in the traveling exhibition, residents and visitors in the Washington, D.C., area can instead get a behind-the-scenes look at the conservation work that goes into maintaining the Air and Space Museums collections.

The restoration hanger at the Udvar-Hazy Center, normally closed off to the public, will have an open house on Mar. 4 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., allowing visitors to meet conservation staff and see some of the objects that will be in the Destination Moon exhibition.

Apollo fundamentally has the appeal that this is a great American accomplishment, Neufeld said. [But] space in general has been a subject associated with the futureIt remains fascinating to a large number of people, and theyre still looking for us to keep going into space and doing something new.

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