Space and Nine and a half weeks (1986) full movie onlinescience nerds, rejoice!

A monumental piece of space exploration history — the Apollo 11 capsule — is soon launching a national tour, giving you a chance to get an up-close view of the spacecraft used in the first lunar landing.

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The Columbiacapsule, which took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on a nearly million-mile journey to the moon and back, is the centerpiece of the upcoming Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission tourof four museums across the country to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in 2019.

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The tour, developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), features the module and more than 20 other objects, as well as an interactive 3D tour that allows visitors to get a view inside the Columbia.

If there's one downside, it's that the exhibition is only going to four museums — but there's plenty of time to plan a trip. Besides, this is the first time Columbiahas left the National Air and Space Museum since it opened in 1976 (the capsule previously did a 50-state tour in 1970 and 1971).

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Here's where the tour is stopping:

  • Space Center Houston, Houston, Texas: Oct. 14, 2017 – March 18, 2018

  • Saint Louis Science Center, St. Louis, Missouri: April 14 – Sept. 3, 2018

  • Senator John Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Sept. 29, 2018 – Feb. 18, 2019

  • The Museum of Flight, Seattle, Washington: March 16 – Sept. 2, 2019

The 50th anniversary of the first moon landing is July 20, 2019, in case you want to really time your visit to the exhibit with the big event.


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