and how many do you think that you have might purchase over next few years? >> as part of our professional do you thinkties we have what's called a collections rationale and that lists the objects that we have discussed as why they are important and also says why we -- what we need. what are the new objects that -- what we would take. it can range from a complete airplane like a boeing b-17 from world war ii to a part of an airplane, such as a drop tank. a mustang used drop tanks to fly away in world war ii. it's a critical element in the story. we do not have a drop tank, we're looking for one. those are kinds of objects we do want to accent wait and improve displays and record that story of the people and events. >> as general daily pointed out earlier, only a small percentage is here. you have more in storage than you're able to show at museums

like this one. >> that's correct. we have a certain percentage here on the national mall and at the center but quite a few of artifacts are in storage. >> jeremy kinney, thanks very much for your time. happy 40th birthday. >> thank you very much. >> it's more than aviation and space exploration, from moon to mars as we continue our tour inside this museum. >> we'll start our tour right here with the lunar module, the icon for the landing on the moon in july 1969. it has a companion space craft, the apollo command module. and the command module, its service module and lunar module together carried three astronauts, neil armstrong, buzz aldren and michael collins to the moon. the command module very

significantly also brought them back safely. this lunar module is an actual lunar module that never flew in space. it's lunar module two. it was intended to be used in an earth orbital test flight but the test was canceled as unnecessary. so nasa transferred this lunar module to the national air and space museum. it consists of two parts, the base, which has the legs, and the rocket engine in it and then oddly shaped top, which is the crew module or crew cabin, and this was attached to the command module for the flight from earth to lunar orbit and once in lunar orbit, the two crew members who would descend to the surface, armstrong and aldren, climbed into the lunar module, it's separated from the command

michael where michael collins stayed to orbit the moon and began its descent down to the surface. >> 30 feet down, picking up some dust, drifting to the right a little but -- engine stop. >> we copy you now, eagle. >> the eagle has landed. >> this was a thrilling moment in history and almost everybody who was alive at that moment remembered where they were, whether they were watching it on television in their own homes or if they were standing in an appliance store watching it on a television. people around the world stopped to watch the landing on the moon and the first steps of human

beings on the moon. >> step off the land mount. that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. >> after the crew, the apollo 11 crew climbed out, done some exploration close to the lunar module, collected some samples of lunar swale and rocks, taken some photographs, placed a u.s. flag on the moon, they went back into the lunar module and this became their vehicle for their trip home. they launched the small top portion laying the base on the moon. they asended back up into lunar orbit and ron day viewed with the command module and exited

the lunar module. once they were secure inside the command module, reunited with michael collins. the lunar module was detached and it fell back to the moon with an intentional crash on the moon because geologists and seismologists wanted to track what kind of impact it made on the moon. so from a space historian's point of view, these two craft, the apollo command module and the lunar module are the icons of the space race. along with the suits worn by the astronauts on the moon, these symbolized that very historic moment in time, july 1969, when human beings first set foot on another body in our solar system. and in effect, won the space

race. when children look at this space craft, they often say that doesn't look like a space ship because we tend to think that space craft are always stream lined and maybe they look like rockets more than anything else. but this space craft has an interesting design and in many ways it's fairly primitive, given the job that it had to do. it didn't need to be stream lined on the outside because it was not going to operate in the atmosphere. it would only operate in the vacuum of space. and it would not be subject to strong graph tagsal field on the moon. so it's actually fairly flimsy in some areas. the legs are obviously strong and mount for the rocket engine is strong but the craft itself and particularly the crew module or crew cabin was really fairly spartan. it had two windows.

neil armstrong had command of the craft during the final descent to landing. both of them were standing. they were fully suited in their space suit and they pretty much filled that interior volume in that position with those space suits on. it was not really designed for comfort. it was designed for the purpose of landing, giving the crew an exit so they could spend a couple of hours on the surface of the moon and then launching again along with their precious cargo of lunar soil and rocks to bring back home to demonstrate that they had been there and to have those materials for scientists to begin analyzing and better understand the moon. it's also amazing to think that the computing power required in that day to send these craft to the moon and program them for

the descent and launch, was done with fairly primitive computer programs and memory was min xul compared to memory now and it's often said the computing power we hold in our hands every day with our smartphones is vastly more than it took to send people to the moon and back. it gives you a sense of the ingenuity to get people to the moon and back safely. so we have seen the iconic artifacts from the heroic age of space flight in the 1960s, the next stop will be sky lab. we're going to look at that. it's one of the original artifacts on display here since before this museum opened. sky lab is so large, it was

brought into the museum before the building was closed out. now i'm standing in front of a model of sky lab that's as tall as i am but the real sky lab orbital work station behind me absolutely dwarfs the model and me. it reaches from the floor up into the sky lights of this building, two stories tall. sky lab was the united states first space station, placed in orbit in 1973 and in 1973 and 74, three different nasa astronaut crews spend time on it. three men at a time, one group for one month, oots group for two months and thirds group for three months. the whole point was to get experience in living and working in space. when the apollo program came to an end, there was still some

hardware left over. and nasa thought, what can we do with this? we developed this tremendous capability to launch spacecraft all the way to the moon. we still have a couple of powerful rockets on hand. can we repurpose them and do something else? so the decision reached was to take the third stage of the gigantic rocket that powered the space craft away from earth on a tra jekt tri to the moon and turn that into a habitable module, a miniature space station that crews could live in while they were getting this experience of living and working in space. the actual element that's behind me is the full cylinder that is marked by this wide white band

here. you can see it's two stories on the inside and those with two floors with the astronauts could live. in the missions to the moon and earth orbit, they had been in spacecraft that were essentially cockpits and had no more room than a sports car. but sky lab was like having a hou house, it actually had rooms. there was a room where they could prepare food, meet around a table and eat together. this eating out of plastic bags and tin cans but at least more home like and socialable. they had sleeping quarters, three bunk areas about the size of closets but each member had a private area to retire for some solitary time and some sleep without being confined to the

frig flight seat in a capsule and most important it had an actual bathroom. it had an actual tie lot. in all of the previous missions, the little known dirty secret is that the astronauts were using plastic bags to collect their waste. but finally they had a toilet and didn't have to deal with the mess of taking care of their body functions. it had a sink where they could wash up and shave. it even had a shower, it was essentially a tunnel like sheath that an astronaut pulled up around him and then could use water from a spray erin side that container but then the trick after the shower was all of the water had to be wiped off, wiped off the body and wiped off the little enclosure,

they finally decided it took -- it was more trouble than it was worth. they would just take sponge baths. but there was also room for them to have an exercise bicycle and to have some experiments set up and then they had a huge attic above the living area where their extra supplies were store and systems elements were there. it was so big that they could run track around the perimeter of it and do tumbling around the perimeter of it, just running and tumbling around the tops of the lockers. that was for fun but they used that space for serious reasons too and they were testing out a jet backpack that might be used on space walks and they were able to operate that in that attic space that was so kmoed yus. then below their living deck

floor, there was the remainder of one of the propellant tanks and that became their big trash can. there was a hatch and they could put their trash through the hatch and it would go down to that lower level. the orbital workshop then was the largest part of the sky lab space station but above it there was an air lock module that enabled them to go outside and service this big observatory the solar observatory, which was a wonderful scientific facility attached to the orbital workshop. and using the instruments, variety of cameras and detectors on what was called the apollo telescope, we got our first really detailed views of activity on the sun. and we understood for first time how dynamic our sun is and how

it's royaling with activity all the time and spewing out big explosions of matter. and it has holes in it and it has storms on it and it was an amazing thing to get this new information through the telescopes on sky lab. then here at the top, one can see the docking port for the apollo command and service module, which was essentially the shuttle craft to bring the astronauts to sky lab and bring them back home again. this whole thing is 22 feet in diameter. and again, when you think of the ingenuity of turning a stage of a rocket which is basically a big fuel tank into a home that people can live in and provide them with plumbing and comfort and room to move around, a window to look out and enjoy the

views of the earth, this was a kind of turning point in our space program. skylab was the test run for what the next big thing was supposed to be. and from the late 1950s and early 1960s on, planners in the united states had foreseen an eventual space station. the original plans were to build a space station in earth orbit first and then go to the moon but president kennedy reversed that and decided to send the united states to the moon first as part of the cold war competition with the soviet union. in the back of everybody's mind there was still a space station. sky lab was the first step towards what now has become the international space station, a huge new facility in earth

orbit. this bow heel moth behind me is the backup sky lab space station. it is flight ready. nasa built two of them in case they wanted to do two sky lab missions or in case there was some hardware problem with the first sky lab orbital workshop. we did make a modification to it. ordinarily we don't modify flight ready hardware but in this case, we cut a passage way to doors into it and laid down a sort of hallway, right through the middle of this living quarter so people who visit the museum can walk inside sky lab and see the living quarters and look into the bathroom and they see a mannequin at the table with some food on the table. the shower is set up there, the exercise bicycle in plain view, they can see the trash air lock right there.

if they look up, they can just be wowed by the aamount of free space there is. i mentioned that sky lab was occupied in 1973 and '74, the last crew to leave sky lab, buttoned it up and put it in sleep mode with a view towards a future crew possibly coming back. and then nasa got busy developing the shuttle. so what happened to sky lab? well, gradually over time its orbit began to deteriorate somewhat and started dropping lower and lower. there was an early plan to use the space shuttle to go up and rondesvous and boost it to a higher altitude to still be available for use but the shuttle wasn't ready to fly. so what happened is after the

orbit diminished, nasa had to bring this back in a controlled reentry. in 1979, sky lab was brought back down and it streaked into meteor, it broke up over the indian ocean and a few pieces fell in parts of australia and were recovered. but fortunately no one was hit, no one was injured, no property was damaged. now i paused here at sky lab because this was still news in 1976 when this museum opened. people streamed in here literally by the millions that first year. they were thrilled not only to see the old aircraft but to see the new spacecraft, to see what had been happening in space that they had seen on the news and heard about. and sky lab was one of these featured attractions.

really focus on recent events in well now we are in the exploring the planets gallery where we really focus on recent events in planetary exploration. this is one of my favorite parts in the museum because this is where we display the three rovers that have been doing major research on the planet mars over the last 20 years. the first rover to land on march was identical to this part of the pathfinder mission of 1996 and a local rover named sojurner was put down on the surface of mars and it operated long beyond its expected lifetime exploring in the vicinity. it has six wheels, rocker wheels that will enable it to go over rocks without tipping over.

it's about the size of a microwave oven if you imagined a microwave oven having wheels. it has solar panels on top to keep it powered. and it was really a little geologist that was put down on the surface of mars to do some of the kinds of investigations that a human geologist would do. it is equipped with a device to touch up against a rock and determine what chemical elements are in that rock. it had a camera for guidance. it could also pick up information about the ambient environment of mars. so you can think of marie curie is the name of this one, and sojurner, as the first geologist to set foot on mars and go roaming around so they could explore a broader area. this is actually the backup for the pathfinder mission. this one could have gone to mars itself.

ten years later after the pathfinder mission, we had another mission that landed a somewhat larger rover on mars. and this is a model of spirit and opportunity. this is an engineering model, though, and isn't really ready to go to mars. but you can see the growth since the first rover. this one is more like the size of a golf cart, perhaps, again with the special wheels so that it can operate well on the uneven terrain. and it's equipped not only with the solar panels to keep it powered up, but with larger and more sophisticated instruments. it has a robotic arm that extends out. it has almost a head here at the front, at the top of this long neck. and that's where the cameras are for its movement around.

it enabled us here on earth to see where it's going and see what it's seeing. it has various other scientific devices on it. and again, a kind of mars weather station to determine what is the ambient environment like. what is the wind like. what are the temperatures at different times during the martian day. what is it like when a dust storm blows up and passes through. so, again, this is a more capable geologist now that's on the surface of mars. but one that is mimicking some of the capabilities that a human being has. spirit and opportunity were launched to mars in the year 2004, and opportunity is still operating, still roaming around on mars, sending back good data. again, long outliving its life.

so now we'll have a look at the third rover that's on the surface of mars. and this one landed in 2012 and is still working today. this is a model of curiosity. curiosity has just grabbed public attention because first of all, it's so big. it's like having a car on mars. and this is the one that had the very dramatic landing sequence where it was dropped from a crane that was descending from the orbital spacecraft. and it was called seven minutes of terror to get it down to the surface of mars without it being damaged. but it was a very successful landing. and curiosity has been roaming for kilometers on the surface of mars. it's studying planes.

it's on the rim of a crater. it's going down into the crater to have a look at what the surface geology is like there. and the main mission of curiosity is to follow the water. scientists have a lot of evidence that at some point in the past mars had a lot of water. and the evidence is in sedimentation on and in portions of land that look as if they have been washed over by water which then evaporated. and so the thrust of the curiosity rover is to investigate sights that seem to have had an abundance water at some time in the past. once again, this is a surrogate for a human geologist, much larger in scale than the pathfinder and the spirit and opportunity rovers. much sturdier structure.

a chassis that really is the size of a compact car. again, a suite of cameras and weather station instruments on board. and this one is also a chemistry lab. there are several devices on here that can do analysis of the chemicals in the soil and in the rocks. it's really being a very exciting mission. and it has no end in sight. i think the public has become very fond of these rovers because they sense that they are surrogates for us and maybe pathfinders for us. they're doing the initial reconnaissance of the surface of mars so that if in the future humans actually go there, they'll know a lot more about the terrain and also know a lot more about sites that might still harbor moisture, if not

actual water. and this pattern replicates what we did when we went to the moon. we started with missions that first flew past the moon. but one of the next things we did is set a lander on the moon just to determine how strong is the soil. can something land there, or will it sink in? if humans are going to land, will they be able to walk on the moon? and i think we're quite confident about mars that humans will be able to move around on the surface of mars very well. the rovers have demonstrated how easy it is to do that. one other thing about the rovers is they don't operate alone and preprogrammed. there are whole teams here on earth that are charting out their itineraries and scheduling their activities.

and when they are working on the mission, in their heads, they are on mars with the rover. and they even wear watches where they set their watch to martian time. the martian day is 24 hours and 39 minutes. so their day is just enough longer than ours that for the people working on earth, each day they start work 39 minutes later. the days creep ahead for them. so when this museum opened in 1976, we were wrapping up a golden age of human exploration with the apollo missions to the moon, and we were launching into the first golden age of planetary exploration with the missions of the 1970s to mars and to the outer planets.

we're now in another golden age of planetary exploration, particularly on mars with curiosity rover so actively exploring there. so we're right in the present moment here when we're with the mars rovers. and i wonder what we might see here in ten years or 20 years as planetary exploration continues with great success, we hope. and there is much talk about having a human mission to mars by about 2030 or so. if that should happen, that will probably be the stellar attraction in the museum by the time the next major anniversary rolls around.