WASHINGTON - The camera that captured many of the Hubble Space
Telescope's most famous images and the "contact lenses" that
focused the observatory's flawed mirror debuted Wednesday at the
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. along with
the first phase of a new interactive gallery devoted to humans living and
working in space.
"Moving Beyond Earth,"
which replaces the prior Rocketry and Space Flight gallery that originally
opened just before the start of the space shuttle era in 1979, seeks
to tell the story of the U.S. Space Transportation System (STS, the original
name of the shuttle system) and the accompanying efforts to build a space
station with an approach mimicking NASA's own history.
"The gallery is in its first stage," explained
curator Valerie Neal. "What you see here today is essentially a
footprint for what will be a fully built-out gallery in the next two
years. We are approaching this incrementally, just as NASA approached the International
Space Station. We are not doing it all at once, we're phasing it
in, element by element."
Currently on display are mostly space shuttle artifacts and
displays that were previously exhibited in other galleries, accompanied
by state-of-the-art touch-screen and button-enabled interactives
designed to engage a new generation of visitors.
"We were very sparse on artifacts," Neal said during
a press preview. "The artifacts for
the space shuttle era were all in use. NASA has been reusing and
recycling and holding close everything needed. Thus artifacts are now just
about to begin to be released. The ability for us to display the
Hubble artifacts is a signal of that availability."
Space artifacts as space holders
The artifacts on display reflect the exhibition's three main
themes: Moving into Space, Living and Working in Space, and Envisioning
our Future in Space.
"Moving Into Space is where we deal with the challenges
and choices involved in the quest to establish routine and reliable,
economical and safe transportation into space," Neal described.
"The signature artifact being of course the space shuttle, represented by
a large model."
The 12-foot 1/24-scale shuttle model was moved from the
neighboring Space Race gallery, where it stood next to the full-size
engineering model of the Hubble Telescope. Its replacement is the 619-pound,
3-foot-by-7-foot Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), which itself was
replaced aboard the Hubble after 16 years of capturing many,
if not most of the observatory's famous images.
"The next section deals with Living and Working in
Space and the challenges of making a home in space, where microgravity
gives us both an opportunity, particularly an opportunity for doing
scientific research, but it is also a hazard," continued Neal.
"One significant portion of that part of the exhibition
is extravehicular activity for spaceflight. The spacewalks on
the servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope were quintessential spacewalks;
they tasked humans to the utmost to do highly-precise work in space under
pretty grueling circumstances."
"We will be highlighting the Hubble servicing missions
in the fully [decked] out gallery but COSTAR and also the Power Control
Unit trainer in the corner here hold the footprint for that section,
as does the International Space Station model above," said Neal,
referencing the Hubble's Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial
Replacement on display alongside a mockup of the observatory's electrical
nerve center that was used to train astronauts.
The Hubble instruments will be on display through
mid-December. They then will travel to southern California to go on
temporary exhibit at several venues. In March 2010, the instruments
will return to the Air and Space Museum, where they will take up permanent
residency.
Moving further around the room, visitors find the Russian
Sokol pressure suit worn by space tourist Dennis Tito and a model of
NASA's proposed Ares launch vehicle.
"Our third section, Envisioning our
Future in Space, will be looking at the questions, challenges and
choices ahead for planning a human future in space," said Neal.
"What is the mix between commercial spaceflight and government-sponsored
spaceflight? What is the mix between human and robotic presences? What is
the mix between science and just basic travel and exploration? All of that
is yet to come."
Much of the room's contents are yet to come, too, but the
gallery in its present phase is not empty.
Walking through the gallery, visitors find themselves
"in orbit" by an expansive rotating view of the Earth that
drifts over one gallery wall, while a fly-around tour of the space station
fills another.
"Also holding the footprints for the first stage are a
series of interactives that are loaded with content that is keyed to
the artifacts and the exhibition," Neal described.
Among the computer-powered challenges are: Spaceflight
Academy, a multi-player trivia game; Be A Flight Director, where users
make decisions based on a real shuttle flight; Design It!, using a
flat table touch-screen to build a space station; and Space For
You?, identifying potential careers in space based on a user's
profile.
Continuing the story
"[These have been] called artifacts, which is kind of
an odd term; these are instruments that I trained for years to work with
and to take out and to bring back, so to me they are very much alive,
not artifacts," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, whose five flights
onboard the shuttle included three visits to the Hubble Space
Telescope.
Grunsfeld, who was on hand at the museum for the debut of
the gallery and the Hubble instruments-turned-artifacts, drew parallels
between the exhibit and the missions it was designed to represent.
"The wonderful thing about the Hubble Space Telescope
and also this gallery, which is different from many parts of the National
Air and Space Museum, is that the Hubble story is still continuing,
even though we have some items back," he explained.
"It is also the story of the International Space
Station. We have a crew on Atlantis now, six crew members went up on
Monday, and there are six crew members onboard [the station], so that
is an active story, so keep in mind when you look at the graphics [in the
gallery] that there are people living and working in space, 365/24/7.
So this gallery will also be part of that living story."
"As we push out of low Earth orbit, hopefully we will
go and do some incredible things that will be both exciting and
innovative, those will too, be part of this gallery and maybe some of
the kids who come in and work with the Spaceflight Academy and pretend to
be flight directors will be part of that story."
"So I am looking forward to the future exhibits
here," said Grunsfeld.
View
more photographs from "Moving Beyond Earth" at collectSPACE.com.
Copyright 2009 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
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