0 comments
Someone alert the Resistance. They have precious few X-wing starfighters in their fleet as is, but now, the Smithsonian has one. Specifically the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The institution has Poe Dameron’s X-wing, last seen in
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Lucasfilm issued a long-term loan for the full-sized vehicle. We can only imagine that they asked Poe’s permission.
The X-wing, the best
Star Wars spaceship, currently sits in the Restoration Hangar at the museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. There, Smithsonian’s staff prepare the vehicle for display with conservation efforts. The public can visit the hangar and observe the work. Note that these efforts, to our knowledge, do not involve a cute, round, orange and white astromech. But even without BB-8, we still welcome the chance to get up close and personal (relatively speaking) with an X-wing.
Star Wars: An X-Wing Is Preparing to Land at the Smithsonian Museum
✖
As vaccination efforts ramp up across the United States, vacations and trips are resuming all over the country. A good few of them are dedicated to the Smithsonian, and it turns out the branch has been gifted something from a galaxy far, far away. According to the museum, it has opened a
Star Wars exhibit of sorts at the National Air and Space Museum that any fan will love.
The update comes from the Smithsonian Magazine as the latest issue covers the branch s X-Wing arrival. Over in Virginia, the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar has welcomed an X-Wing courtesy of Lucasfilm. The
Smithsonian Welcomes Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter
Smithsonian Welcomes Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter
This X-wing Starfighter appeared in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and is on long-term loan from Lucasfilm. It is pictured here in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. It will go on display, fully assembled, in 2022 in the museum s flagship building on the National Mall.
On May 4th, as now seems appropriate, we were all treated to the extraordinary sight of an X-Wing Starfighter movie prop sitting in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar, as if awaiting its turn in the restoration queue at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The museum’s press release below explains exactly how this coolly amusing occurrence came to be…
The National Air and Space Museum holds some of the most hallowed objects of the aerial age.
Visitors can marvel at the 1903 Wright Flyer that skimmed over Kitty Hawk, N.C., the bright red Lockheed 5B Vega that Amelia Earhart piloted alone across the Atlantic Ocean and the bell-shaped Friendship 7 capsule that made John H. Glenn Jr. the first American to orbit the Earth.
Now, the museum said, it will display a spacecraft that has flown only onscreen, in an entirely fictional galaxy where good and evil seem locked in eternal battle.
That’s right: An X-wing Starfighter will grace the museum’s newly renovated building on the National Mall sometime late next year, the museum said on Tuesday, which was celebrated by “Star Wars” fans as a holiday because it was May 4 (May the 4th be with you).
The Smithsonian reopened the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F.Udvar-HazyCenter to the public Wednesday, May 5, on the 60th anniversary of the first American spaceflight and for the first time, the Mercury mission’s Freedom 7 capsule that carried Alan Shepard into space was on display.
On May 5, 1961, he made the first crewed American flight into space. Shepard would go on to walk on the moon.
The Mercury mission’s Freedom 7 capsule that carried Alan Shepard into space on May 5, 1961, the first crewed American spaceflight. [Renss Greene/Loudoun Now]
But if the historic Freedom 7 space capsule isn’t enough, visitors will for the first time also get to see to a Blue Angels F/A-18C on display, which the museum acquired in November after it flew into Washington Dulles International Airport.