Collection
Included in the Cosmosphere's collection are an Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft from Mercury 4 and the Odyssey command module from Apollo 13, as well as Redstone and Titan II launch vehicles used in the Mercury and Gemini programs. A prized item on display is a moon rock from Apollo 11, the first manned mission to land on the moon.
The Cosmosphere is the only museum in the world that has both an authentic restored V-1 flying bomb and an authentic restored V-2 missile. It is also the only museum outside of Russia that has an authentic, flown Vostok capsule.
Nearly all of the vehicles, rockets, spacecraft, and spacesuits on display are either authentic or a "flight-ready backup," which is identical to the item actually flown: if a problem is detected in a spacecraft, rocket, or suit before it is flown, the backup fills in on the mission for the damaged item. The only replicated items in the Cosmosphere are the model of Glamorous Glennis, the Bell X-1 flown by Chuck Yeager, and the life-sized space shuttle replica that greets visitors.
The Cosmosphere museum begins with the earliest experiments in rocketry during the World War II era, explores through the Space Race and Cold War, and continues through modern times with the Space Shuttle and International Space Station.
- Items on display
- Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft, recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only flown spacecraft owned by a museum outside the National Air and Space Museum.
- Gemini X space capsule
- Apollo 13 command module Odyssey
- An actual Apollo White Room
- A Titan II rocket used in the Gemini program
- A Russian Vostok space capsule
- A replica of the X-1 flown by Chuck Yeager, Glamorous Glennis, used in the filming of The Right Stuff
- An engine from Glamorous Glennis flown by Yeager
- An X-15 rocket engine
- A U.S. Air Force SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane
- A backup version of the Vanguard 1 satellite
- Moon rock collected during Apollo 11
- A Mercury-Redstone rocket
- Restored versions of World War II V-1 and V-2 rockets
- Prototype and space-flown American and Russian spacesuits
- The largest meteorite ever found in the U.S.
- A full-scale mock-up of Space Shuttle Endeavour (left side only)
- A section from the Berlin Wall - last section removed
- A Lunar Rover
- A Lunar Module
- Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Craft
- A copy of the sphere-shaped Soviet pennant flown on Luna 2
- Piece of tile from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
- A flight-ready backup for Sputnik 1
Read more about this topic: Kansas Cosmosphere And Space Center
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