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  • Lockheed C-141C Starlifter "Hanoi Taxi"

    Note: Visitors are permitted to walk in this aircraft.The C-141 Starlifter was the US Air Force’s first major jet aircraft designed to meet military standards as a troop and cargo carrier. Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) built a total of 285 C-141s, and for more than 40 years, C-141s performed

  • Gemini Spacecraft

    Manned Orbiting Laboratory SpacecraftThis spacecraft was built for the U.S. Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program, a top-secret effort to take extremely detailed reconnaissance photographs of Cold War adversaries’ territory from space. The MOL program planned to use astronauts to

  • Mercury Spacecraft

    Project Mercury was the first American human spaceflight program. Its goals were to put astronauts into orbit around the Earth, to find out if they could survive and work in space, and recover the crewmen and spacecraft safely. Between 1961 and 1963, six successful flights proved Americans could fly

  • Project Man High Gondola

    Project Man High was a series of three U.S. Air Force balloon flights to the edge of space in 1957-1958. The flights reached the stratosphere at around 100,000 feet to study the effects of high altitudes on humans. This gondola helped researchers gather important aeromedical data, and its flights

  • Teal Ruby

    Experimental Early Warning SensorThis satellite, known as spacecraft P80-1, carried an experimental infrared telescope code named “Teal Ruby.” Designed to detect heat, Teal Ruby was meant to give early warning of enemy aircraft crossing the polar region toward the United States during the Cold

  • HEXAGON KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite

    HEXAGON KH-9 reconnaissance satellites were the largest and last U.S. intelligence satellites to return photographic film to earth. During the Cold War, 19 HEXAGON missions imaged 877 million square miles of the Earth’s surface between 1971-1986.HEXAGON’s main purpose was wide-area search. Analysts

  • GAMBIT 3 KH-8 Reconnaissance Satellite

    Please Note: This artifact is currently in storage and off public display.The GAMBIT 3 KH-8 photo reconnaissance satellite improved on the GAMBIT 1 KH-7 by providing much better image resolution. GAMBIT 3’s stereoscopic cameras focused on details in small target areas, while other satellites

  • GAMBIT 1 KH-7 Reconnaissance Satellite

    Please Note: This artifact is currently in storage and off public display.The GAMBIT 1 KH-7 satellite was the first American space reconnaissance system to consistently return high-resolution photographs. GAMBIT 1 vehicles flew from 1963-1967 and were the first satellites to feature stereo cameras.

  • Lockheed Martin Titan IVB Rocket

    The Titan IVB was the U.S. Air Force’s largest and most powerful expendable single-use rocket. It was a space launch vehicle used to place satellites into orbit. Titan IVB rockets boosted payloads into low earth orbit, polar orbit, or geosynchronous (stationary) orbit from either Cape Canaveral,

  • Space Shuttle Crew Compartment Trainer

    The Space Shuttle Crew Compartment Trainer 1 (CCT-1) is one of three shuttle mockups used to train shuttle astronauts. In CCT-1, crewmembers learned and practiced many procedures for space missions.CCT-1 is an important piece of space history. NASA trained astronauts in it from the first shuttle