Air & Space Museum’s restoration to revive enthusiasm for space, says director

A seven-year restoration of the National Air and Space Museum on Washington’s National Mall, scheduled to begin this fall, aims to rekindle the enthusiasm for space exploration that gripped America with Apollo moon landing program 50 years ago, the museum’s new director, Ellen Stofan, told a National Press Club Headliners Luncheon Oct. 22.

Calling the landing in 1969 “history’s biggest achievement,” Stofan said the Apollo program’s “level of excitement and engagement is what I want people to feel when they visit the Air & Space Museum.”

Stofan, chief scientist at NASA from 2013-2016 who became the museum’s seventh director in April, stressed that the facility will remain open to the public during its update. The museum, which opened in the nation’s bicentennial year of 1976, has drawn 350 million visitors. It is the world’s third most-visited museum behind China’s National Museum in Beijing and the Louvre in Paris.

The restoration project, said Stofan, will include a “complete renewal of the building” ranging from replacing its exterior cladding to replacing heating, ventilation and air conditioning and other major interior systems.

But more exciting to the public, she said, will be a “re-imagining” of the museum’s exhibition galleries and public spaces.” The museum currently holds 3,800 artifacts. All will be de-installed, inspected, conserved and put in temporary storage before being put back on exhibit.

In addition, some 1,400 new objects will be put on display, she said. Some, such as , an iconic World War I Sopwith-Camel aircraft, will be moved from the Udvar-Hazy Center, the museum’s annex built 20 years ago near Dulles International Airport.

The exhibit redesign will be directed especially toward young people, Stofan said. Pointing out that 75% of the museum’s visitors are millennials or younger who have no first-hand knowledge of the moon landing, she said the museum will put a “special focus on capturing a piece of that electrifying moment in history for them, inspiring them to look forward to their own moon shot.”

Stofan expressed hope that the museum can help persuade young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “Somewhere between childhood and that key first or second job, whole segments of society drop away from STEM courses and careers,” she said. “This attrition in the STEM pipeline threatens not just individual careers, but whole industries.”

The launch of the museum’s restoration coincides with the facility’s observation of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 16, 1969. A year-long slate of activities will culminate with an all-night celebration at the museum on the anniversary date, Stofan said.

Even as the museum focuses on the moon landing, Stofan said that “another discovery is on the horizon, which I consider more fundamentally important.” As humans explore neighboring planets and robotic missions probe the outer solar system, she predicted, “within our lifetime we will find life elsewhere in the universe.”

In answer to a question about the cost of sending humans to Mars, Stofan said “I do not worry so much about the money.” Because infrastructure for space programs already exists, she explained, “There are ways to do it that are affordable. … It is a question of whether we have the will to do it.”