CHANTILLY, Va.\u2014Thousands of the nation\u2019s historic air and space artifacts\u2014including a Navy dive bomber from World War II and spacesuits from the Apollo era\u2014are slowly being moved from a cramped site in Maryland to a state-of-the-art Smithsonian conservation hangar in northern Virginia.<\/p>\n
Faced with an ongoing shortage of suitable space to preserve its massive collection, the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s new air and space warehouse is a bright spot for the museum complex. The National Air and Space Museum opened its Udvar-Hazy Center annex in Virginia 10 years ago with a design to store thousands of artifacts on display. Now over the past year, the site has also opened a massive $79 million restoration hangar and conservation lab with additional storage space for artifacts.<\/p>\n
Conservators will offer the public the first behind-the-scenes look at the facility during a free open house Saturday.<\/p>\n
Visitors can meet with curators and archivists and learn how aircraft and fragile pieces are cared for.<\/p>\n
Last year, the Smithsonian\u2019s inspector general testified in Congress that the continued use of substandard facilities elsewhere posed a risk to important art and science collections. One site in Maryland was built in the 1950s and 1960s as a temporary holding site that became permanent.<\/p>\n
Chief Conservator Malcolm Collum said Thursday that the museum now has a conservation lab to meet the highest standards of any aerospace museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a huge leap forward,\u201d he said. \u201cThe space we\u2019re in now is approximately 10 times larger just in volume. But we\u2019ve also increased our analytical capability immensely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Apollo-era spacesuits, which are now 40 and 50 years old, are fragile, brittle and deteriorating, so conservators have been studying how to slow the decay. A special room in the new facility was designed as a cool, dark place to store the historic spacesuits.<\/p>\n
Other areas house artifacts from the past 110 years of flight, from wool and leather uniforms to artifacts from World War II.<\/p>\n
Conservators also are studying how to preserve aluminum artifacts from the latter half of the 20th century.<\/p>\n
So far, 8,000 artifacts have been relocated from the Smithsonian\u2019s outdated Garber facility in suburban Maryland to the new site near Dulles International Airport in Virginia. They\u2019re being moved one by one around the nation\u2019s capital. At the current pace, all the small artifacts are to be installed at the new site by 2018, along with about 1,500 medium-size artifacts.<\/p>\n
Larger artifacts will have to wait until additional buildings are constructed by 2030, depending on funding. In total, 39,000 artifacts still must be moved in the years to come.<\/p>\n
The Smithsonian\u2019s aerospace hangar has grown to become Virginia\u2019s most-visited museum. When it opened 10 years ago, there were just 348 artifacts on display. Now there are more than 3,000, including the space shuttle Discovery and the Enola Gay B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan in World War II.<\/p>\n