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National Air and Space Museum

About National Air and Space Museum

The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the Smithsonian Institution is a museum in Washington, D.C., United States, dedicated to human flight and space exploration.

Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, its main building opened on the National Mall near L'Enfant Plaza in 1976. In 2023, the museum welcomed 3.1 million visitors, making it the fourth-most visited museum in the United States and eleventh-most in the world.

The museum is a center for research into the history and science of aviation and spaceflight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics. Almost all of its spacecraft and aircraft on display are original primary or backup craft (rather than facsimiles). Its collection includes the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, the Friendship 7 capsule which was flown by John Glenn, Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, the model of the starship Enterprise used in the science fiction television show Star Trek: The Original Series, and the Wright brothers' Wright Flyer airplane near the entrance.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Aviation museum
Founded
1946
Opened
1976
Annual visitors
6.9M
in 2015

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  1. National Air and Space Museum, Washington01WashingtonDavid Bjorgen · CC BY-SA 3.0
  2. Air&Space Elephant & Castle02Air&Space Elephant & CastleJonathan D. Parshall · CC BY-SA 3.0
  3. 02777-National-Air-and-Space-Museum03National-Air-and-Space-Museumxiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0
  4. 02690-National-Air-and-Space-Museum04National-Air-and-Space-Museumxiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0
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  6. 02737-National-Air-and-Space-Museum06National-Air-and-Space-Museumxiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0

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Nearby museums

Make a day of it. 4 more museums are within a mile of National Air and Space Museum; the closest, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, is practically next door.