Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit Is On Display For The First Time In 13 Years
July 16, 2019 | In the PressFrom DCist.com (https://dcist.com/story/19/07/16/neil-armstrongs-spacesuit-is-on-display-for-the-first-time-in-13-years/)
The suit that went to the moon is back on display here on Earth. Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit—the one he wore while making humanity’s first steps on our lunar neighbor 50 years ago this week—was unveiled this morning at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum after extensive conservation made possible by a 2015 Kickstarter campaign.
“When people were watching [on their TVs at home] 50 years ago, this suit is what they saw,” Cathleen Lewis, curator of space history at the museum, tells DCist. “They didn’t see Neil Armstrong. They saw this spacesuit stepping down onto the moon.”
Now positioned near the 1903 Wright Flyer, this is the first time the suit has been on display since 2006. The suit will eventually join the forthcoming exhibit Destination Moon, estimated to set up at the museum in 2022.
Armstrong’s suit is one of the most treasured artifacts in the Smithsonian’s collection. Weighing about 180 pounds (including its life-support backpack) and consisting of 21 layers, it cost $100,000 to make in 1969. Today, that translates to nearly $700,000. But this very expensive article of clothing was only intended to survive an eight-day mission, not for years after at the most visited museum in the country.
By 2006, some three and a half decades after its trip to the moon, the spacesuit was showing its age. So, it was taken off display and moved to a storage facility. In 2015, with the Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary fast approaching, the Smithsonian launched a crowdfunding campaign to “reboot the suit.” They met their goal of half a million dollars in just five days, eventually raising more than $700,000. (Some of the funds will be used to conserve astronaut Alan Shepard’s suit.)
Lewis says the time was right to do the work needed to preserve the suit for generations to come. “It was a correlation of forces,” she says. “The realization that [the suit] wasn’t going to last forever, especially in the conditions it was being exhibited. The technology to do this that wasn’t available sooner. And the Kickstarter that gave us the opportunity to fund this.”
The museum’s goal was to preserve and conserve the suit as opposed to restoring it. For conservators and historians, the spacesuit tells the story of walking on the moon for the first time. To restore it, they say, would be to potentially erase the details of that history. “We don’t make it new,” Lewis says. “We don’t want to change anything that’s an important historical feature, even some of the damage to the suit.”
This includes preserving the lunar dust on the suit. Armstrong’s suit, gloves, and boots picked up a considerable amount of particles from the moon, which can still be seen caked on. Not that moon dust is easy to get off anyway. Lisa Young, objects conservator at the museum, says that lunar dust is made up of six different types of minerals and is very stubborn. “It’s embedded in the fabric. You can’t just wipe it off,” says Young. “It won’t come off even if I tried to vacuum it.”
The museum’s spacesuit unveiling took place at nearly the exact same moment as the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Apollo 11’s mission. On July 16th, 1969, at 9:32 am,the Saturn V rocket ignited and headed to the moon. The significance wasn’t lost on those who spoke at Tuesday’s event. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said the mission was proof of America’s spirit of exploration. He also reaffirmed that the White House has given NASA “bold direction to return sustainably to the moon by 2024 and, then, on to Mars.”
Vice President Mike Pence echoed this commitment in his remarks, saying it is “the policy of the United States of America to return to the moon within the next five years.” It’s not the first time he’s made such a claim: Back in March, Pence said the United States would return to the moon “by any means necessary,” only for his boss to issue a seemingly contradictory tweet last month.
While there remains a debate over the future of human space exploration, the history of it remains secure at our local Air and Space Museum. “The suit itself is a very complex machine,” says Lewis, “I hope [many] relish the chance to see it.” Ellen Stofan, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, agrees. “I really want people to appreciate this. There are pieces of another world on that suit.”
