The Smithsonian Institution – which does not charge admission – wants to have Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit ready to unveil on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in 2019. The money will help experts preserve Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit, display it in a climate-controlled environment and 3-D scan its components to create an interactive Web display.
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The suit will be a centerpiece in “Destination Moon”, a gallery opening in 2020 that will be an updated version of the museum’s current “Apollo to the Moon” exhibit.
With 29 days to go, the Air and Space Museum is almost a quarter of the way towards its goal, receiving nearly $125,000 from more than 1,400 backers. Thus, the only way it can be displayed publicly is if a scientist takes steps to stop its deterioration and constructs a high-tech display case that can mimic the conditions of the climate-controlled storage area where the suit is currently kept.
As with other Kickstarter projects, those Smithsonian campaigns that fail to hit their funding goal will not receive any money and pledged donations will not be processed. The spacesuit would then go to a larger permanent exhibit on the Moon landings to open in 2020 at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
The Armstrong suit restoration project is the first of several efforts at crowdfunding with Kickstarter that the Smithsonian will undertake. “We are going to use state-of-the-art observation tools in terms of imaging, including CAT scanning, 3D imaging and other forms of photogrammetry – hopefully even looking in UV and IR to look under the surface – to document everything about the suit”.
“NASA made [spacesuits] basically for that one objective, just to get astronauts into space, to protect them while they’re there, and get them home”, Alison Mitchell, public affairs specialist at the National Air and space Museum, tells the Guardian. Hence, the Kickstarter campaign “Reboot the Suit” was launched.
Bidding to raise US$500,000 to help finance the conservation of the astronaut’s space attire, the Smithsonian Institute has launched the Kickstarter campaign today. That bodes well for future Smithsonian-Kickstarter collaborations that will seek to preserve the American heritage we all share.
“Through Kickstarter, we are reaching global audiences with the ability to make fantastic projects come to life”, Yoonhyung Lee, director of digital philanthropy at the Smithsonian, said in a statement.
Should it succeed, the Smithsonian will begin a sophisticated and careful process to “conserve, digitize and display Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit for explorers everywhere”.
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This Apollo 11 spacesuit conservation project is the first in this series. I cant wait to back this project!.
