D.C.-based for decades, Apollo 11 capsule to go on road trip

CHANTILLY, VA. » The Apollo 11 command module, which traveled more than 950,000 miles to take Americans to the moon and back in 1969, is going on a road trip, leaving the Smithsonian for the first time in more than four decades.

The capsule, named “Columbia,” went on a tour of U.S. capitals following its historic role in the mission to the moon. But it has since made its home at the Smithsonian in Washington. On Wednesday, officials announced a four-city road tour ahead of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in 2019. The capsule will visit museums in Houston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Seattle as part of a new exhibit: “Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission.”

Part of the reason for the tour is that the Smithsonian is working to renovate the gallery at its National Air and Space Museum in Washington that tells the story of the Apollo missions, but that exhibit isn’t scheduled to open until 2020. Smithsonian space history department curator Allan Needell says the Smithsonian didn’t want to just store the capsule and instead decided that “while we’re preparing for its new home we could share it with other venues and have some broader access to it.”

The command module is only a part of the spacecraft that blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on July 16, 1969, on an eight-day moon mission. The cap-

In this July 24, 1969, photo, the Apollo 11command module lands in the Pacific Ocean and the crew waits to be picked up by U.S. Navy personnel after an eight day mission to the moon.