posted 01-17-2024 05:30 PM               

World-renown spaceflight museum set for renovation at Cosmosphere

The home of a famously-sunken Mercury capsule and the spacecraft that brought the Apollo 13 crew back to Earth is getting an upgrade.

The Cosmosphere, a world-class space museum located in Hutchinson, Kansas, announced this week that it is ready to continue with the redesign and renovation of its Hall of Space, a series of galleries that together allows visitors to step back through the history of space exploration by way of an extensive artifact collection.

posted 06-18-2024 04:50 PM               

Cosmosphere's Rocket Gallery to Feature Flight-Proven Engine from SpaceX's Falcon 9

The Cosmosphere is pleased to announce that it has received a flight-proven Merlin rocket engine donated to the Museum by its manufacturer, SpaceX.

Nine Merlin engines power SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Falcon 9 is the world's first orbital class, reusable rocket designed for the safe and reliable transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. The Merlin engine received by the Cosmosphere helped power the launch of the Koreasat-5A mission on October 30, 2017, which lifted off from the historic Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the same pad that supported many of the Apollo missions.

"The Cosmosphere is grateful to receive a flown Merlin engine from SpaceX," said Jim Remar, Cosmosphere president and CEO. "The inclusion of the engine in our museum reaffirms the fact that the Cosmosphere houses one of the greatest collections of space exploration hardware."

The Merlin engine will be displayed in the Cosmosphere's new rocket gallery, which is set to open in late 2024.