Museum will review ‘racial effect’ of rocket launches

The Science Museum is to review how rocket launches may have affected indigenous populations in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

A group of staff at the museum called on the institution to declare itself “antiracist” following the death of George Floyd and branded collections “racist and colonialist”.

The Science Museum Group has since signed off reforms to address racism and colonialism in its collections.

The latest review will allow the museum to update labelling in parts of its “Exploring Space” gallery to reflect “the impact of rocket launches on indigenous communities”, internal documents have revealed. Inuit communities have raised concerns that some space launches have resulted in debris and toxic fuel falling in remote areas.

Planned changes at the museum follow a statement to staff that: “The history of the museum’s collections, and the history of science, technology and industry, is intertwined with Britain’s history of empire and colonialism.”

The museum wants to present a “more inclusive view of science, technology, engineering and maths”, including through a greater focus on African American astronauts. Objects related to the slave trade will also be reviewed, including whips and a “man-catcher”.

A staff group told managers in internal documents that the group should acknowledge it is “an institution whose collections are inherently racist and colonialist, made up of many objects acquired through imperialism”.

Sir Ian Blatchford, the museum’s director, recently wrote in The Daily

that his approach would seek to avoid “activist language” and “clumsy ahistorical judgments”.