The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the United States' Smithsonian Institution maintains the largest collection of aircraft and spacecraft in the world. Its notable exhibits include:

• The original Wright Flyer that made the first controlled, powered flight in 1903
• The Spirit of St. Louis, in which Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean
• The Bell X-1, in which Chuck Yeager made the first powered supersonic level flight
• A reconstructed V-2 rocket, the first type of man-made object to reach space
• The command module of Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the moon
• One of the very few lunar rock samples accessible to the public (visitors can even touch it)
• A model of the original starship USS Enterprise from the science fiction television series, Star Trek (In the lower level of the museum store).

The main exhibit hall of the museum is on the National Mall in Washington, DC, and is one of the most popular tourist destinations of the city. In addition to the rooms crowded with historic aircraft and other artifacts, there is an IMAX theater and the Albert Einstein Planetarium.

The museum's total collection numbers over 30,000 aviation-related and 9,000 space-related artifacts, and is thus larger than will fit in the main hall. Many of the aircraft are at the Garber Restoration Facility in Suitland, Maryland.

In addition, the museum has an annex, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, located near Dulles Airport, opened on December 15, 2003. It will eventually have 200 aircraft (Small, 2003) and 135 spacecraft on display, and its notable exhibits already include:

• The B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay, the first plane from which a nuclear weapon was dropped
• The prototype for the Boeing 707 airliner, known as the Boeing 367-80 or "Dash 80"
• An SR-71 Blackbird high-altitude, high-speed stealth reconaissance aircraft
• An Air France Concorde, the famous model of supersonic airliner
• The prototype atmospheric test only space shuttle Enterprise

Some of these aircraft were too large for NASM's main hall. The Center was made possible by a US$ 65 million gift in October 1999 to the Smithsonian Institution by Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, an immigrant from Hungary and co-founder of the International Lease Finance Corporation (Small, 2003). Construction of the Center required fifteen years of preparation (Triplett, 2003).

The main NASM building was designed by noted architect I. M. Pei. The Museum has a research department, archives, and library.

External link

• NASM website

References

• Small, L. M. (2003, December). A century's roar and buzz: Thanks to an immigrant's generosity, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center opens to the public. In From the Secretary. Smithsonian, 34, 20.
• Triplett, W. (2003, December). Hold everything! Smithsonian, 34, 59.