Its collection includes the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, the Friendship 7 capsule which was flown by John Glenn, Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, the model of the starship Enterprise used in the science fiction television show Star Trek: The Original Series, and the Wright brothers' Wright Flyer airplane near the entrance.

The museum's main building on the National Mall is undergoing a multi-year, $360M renovation that started in 2018, during which some of its spaces and galleries are closed.

[3][4] Some pieces in the National Air and Space Museum collection date back to the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia after which the Chinese Imperial Commission donated a group of kites to the Smithsonian after Smithsonian Secretary Spencer Fullerton Baird convinced exhibiters that shipping them home would be too costly.

Bulldozers from Fort Belvoir and prefabricated buildings from the United States Navy kept the initial costs low.

[7] The space race in the 1950s and 1960s led to the renaming of the museum to the National Air and Space Museum, and finally congressional passage of appropriations for the construction of the new exhibition hall,[8] which opened July 1, 1976, at the height of the United States Bicentennial festivities under the leadership of Director Michael Collins, who had flown to the Moon on Apollo 11.

[12][13][14] The Smithsonian has also been promised the International Cometary Explorer, which is currently in a solar orbit that occasionally brings it back to Earth, should NASA attempt to recover it.

[17] The Air and Space Museum announced a two-year renovation of its main entrance hall, "Milestones of Flight" in April 2014.

The renovation to the main hall (which had not received a major update since the museum opened in 1976) was funded by a $30 million donation from Boeing.

The renovation (whose total cost was not revealed) began in April 2014, and will involve the temporary removal of some exhibits before the hall is refurbished.

The renovation will also include the installation of a "media wall" and touch-screen information kiosks to allow visitors to learn about items on display.

An additional gift from Boeing is funding the renovation of the "How Things Fly" children's exhibit, new museum educational programming, and the creation of an accredited course on flight and space technology for elementary and secondary school teachers.

[18] In June 2015, the Smithsonian made public a report which documented the need for extensive renovations to the Air and Space Museum.

[a] The museum's glass curtain walls (among those elements of the 1976 structure whose design was altered for cost reasons) are too permeable to ultraviolet radiation.

Several exhibits (such as the spacesuit worn by John Young during the Gemini 10 mission, and the coating on the Spirit of St. Louis aircraft) have been damaged by this radiation.

[17] Additionally, the Smithsonian's report noted that cutbacks in building design prior to and during construction left the museum with too few amenities, main entrances which are partially obscured, and exhibit space which does not meet current ADA accessibility standards.

[17] On June 30, 2015, the Smithsonian began seeking approval for a $365 million renovation to the National Air and Space Museum.

[b] The glass curtain walls will be replaced with triple glazed, thermally broken panels set in an aluminum frame.

[17] Additional changes the Smithsonian would like to make, but which are not contained in the $365 million price tag, include the installation of 1,300 solar panels on the roof and the Independence Avenue side of the museum, the construction of vestibules over the main entrances, and reconstruction of the terraces (which leak water into the parking garage and offices beneath the structure).

[17] The Smithsonian said it would submit its designs to the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) on July 9, 2015, for review and approval.

[21][22] The renovation includes demolishing the food court pavilion (closed in 2017) to make way for the 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2), three-story, Jeff Bezos Learning Center.

[26] Editorials called the National Air and Space Museum "an unpatriotic institution"[27] due to the political nature of initial proposed script.

[27] This second revision was greeted with a large amount of Congressional involvement that resulted in line-by-line reviews of the script, which led to the less radical display that was seen in 1995.

[45] The Lindbergh Chair is a one-year senior fellowship to assist a scholar in the research and composition of a book about aerospace history.