Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia
North American Rockwell · 1969
A scorched cone about the size of a small car sits at the centre of the Destination Moon gallery, its heat shield browned and blistered, its hatch open so that you can see the three couches inside. This is Columbia, the only part of the Apollo 11 spacecraft that came back to Earth. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins lived in it for eight days in July 1969, and on the twenty fourth of July it fell into the Pacific at forty thousand kilometres an hour, its shield glowing at nearly three thousand degrees, before three parachutes lowered it into the sea.
The cabin is astonishingly small: the three men had about as much room as the inside of a large car. Look at the hatch, which Collins opened in orbit to let Armstrong and Aldrin cross to the lunar module Eagle, and at the streaks on the shield, which show where the heat flowed as the capsule tilted during entry. On the interior walls the crew wrote notes in pen, including a small calendar Collins kept to mark off the days, and the words Spacecraft 107, alias Apollo 11, alias Columbia, the best ship to come down the line, God bless her. Those inscriptions were rediscovered when the module was scanned in three dimensions in 2016.
NASA transferred Columbia to the Smithsonian in 1970, and it stood in the Milestones hall from 1976 until 2017, when it toured four American cities for the fiftieth anniversary of the landing. It returned in 2022 to the new Destination Moon gallery, which also holds Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 capsule, Armstrong's spacesuit and the F-1 engine that powered the Saturn V. Walk all the way around it. From behind, where the shield is most burnt, you understand best what coming home from the Moon involved.
Did You Know? Michael Collins wrote a note inside the cabin calling Columbia the best ship to come down the line, and it was only found when the interior was scanned in 2016.
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