National Air and Space Museum

There are aircraft you find in every larger museum. And there is a single one that made all the others possible. The 1903 Wright Flyer hangs not in Kitty Hawk and not in Dayton, but in Washington – in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Just a few steps further wait the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-1, the X-15 and the Apollo 11 command module. Hardly any other building gathers so many originals that wrote aviation history in so little space.

A museum for the nation

The National Air and Space Museum is part of the Smithsonian Institution, the USA’s large museum and research complex based in Washington. It was founded on August 12, 1946 by act of Congress, at the time still as the National Air Museum. With the space race, spaceflight was added – and the name under which the building is world famous today.

For a long time the collection had no building of its own that did it justice. That changed on July 1, 1976: right on time for the 200th birthday of the United States, the new building opened on the south side of the National Mall. It was designed by Gyo Obata of the architecture firm HOK. The long building of pink Tennessee marble alternates with large glass halls in which aircraft and rockets hang freely under the ceiling.

Since then the building has been among the most visited museums in the USA. According to Wikipedia, around 3.1 million people came in 2023 alone – even though large parts were closed for construction work at the time.

Important for your planning: the museum has two locations. The building on the Mall shows the icons and tells the big stories. The large aircraft of the collection – including Space Shuttle Discovery, a Concorde and the SR-71 Blackbird – are at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, right at Washington Dulles Airport. It opened in December 2003.

The Wright Flyer: the aircraft with which it all began

On the morning of December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made history in the dunes of Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. At 10:35 a.m. Orville took off in the Flyer, stayed in the air for 12 seconds and covered about 36 meters. After that the brothers took turns. The longest flight of the day was made by Wilbur: 59 seconds and 852 feet, or about 260 meters. Shortly afterward a gust of wind caught the parked Flyer and flipped it over. It was badly damaged and never flew again.

What hangs in Washington is exactly this machine. The whole story of Kitty Hawk, the glider experiments and the road there is told in our article on the Wright brothers and the first powered flight.

The design looks strange to today’s eyes. The elevator is at the front, the two propellers turn behind the wings, there is no landing gear – the Flyer started from a wooden rail and landed on skids. The brothers built the engine themselves together with Charles Taylor, the mechanic from their bicycle shop. The aluminum crankcase was remarkably light for the time.

Original – with limitations

Is that really the 1903 aircraft? Yes, the wooden and metal parts are original. The covering is not. Before the Flyer went to London in 1928, Orville Wright reworked it together with a collaborator and covered it with new muslin of the same kind. In 1985 it was again completely dismantled, cleaned, conserved and re-covered. According to the museum, a surviving piece of the originally flown wing covering served as the template.

Small parts of the Flyer have even traveled farther than it did itself. Neil Armstrong took wood and fabric from the Flyer to the Moon with Apollo 11 – the museum shows this keepsake in the Wright gallery. And a piece of covering is attached to Ingenuity, the helicopter that made the first controlled flight in another planet’s atmosphere on Mars in 2021.

The long detour via London

That the Flyer hangs in Washington today was anything but a given for a long time. The background is one of the best-known disputes in aviation history.

Samuel Langley, a former secretary of the Smithsonian, had also tried with his Aerodrome to get a manned powered aircraft into the air – in 1903 he failed twice. The Smithsonian under Charles Walcott nevertheless promoted Langley’s machine as the first airworthy powered aircraft. In 1914 Glenn Curtiss had modified the Aerodrome and made short hops with it at Keuka Lake; the changes were presented as a “restoration,” which critics disputed.

Orville Wright drew consequences from this. In January 1928 the Flyer went on loan to the Science Museum in London – abroad, because his own national institution did not recognize the brothers’ achievement. During the Second World War it was stored there in an underground facility near Corsham, about 160 kilometers from London.

Only in 1942 did the Smithsonian under Charles Abbot withdraw its earlier statements and recognize the Wrights’ flights of 1903. Orville did not live to see his aircraft’s homecoming: he died in early 1948. In the same year the Flyer came back and was officially handed over to the Smithsonian on December 17, 1948, the 45th anniversary of the first flights. The agreement contains a remarkable clause: for no aircraft older than the Flyer may the museum claim that it was capable of controlled, piloted powered flight.

The Wright brothers gallery

The Flyer is the center of the gallery “The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial Age,” according to the museum Gallery 107 on the ground floor. It tells who the two bicycle builders from Dayton were, how they systematically solved the problem of flight control and how the world reacted to their invention.

Besides the aircraft, the museum shows there, among other things:

• an original propeller of the Flyer with fixed pitch,
• the stopwatch of the brothers, with which they timed their flights,
• the telegraph key through which the news of the success was sent,
• a replica of the 1900 glider, one of the Flyer’s predecessors,
• wood and fabric of the Flyer that were on the Moon with Apollo 11.

If you want to dig deeper into the story, the trip to Ohio is worthwhile: at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, the Wrights’ hometown, the story of early military aviation continues.

Milestones and pioneers

Right behind the entrance opens the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall. According to the museum it is the central hall on the ground floor and a kind of showcase for the whole collection. Since the reopening in July 2025, the following hang and stand here, among others:

• the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, with which Chuck Yeager was the first to break the sound barrier in level flight in 1947 – more on this in the article on breaking the sound barrier,
• the North American X-15, the rocket plane that pushed to the edge of space,
• SpaceShipOne, the first privately developed crewed spacecraft,
• the Bell XP-59A Airacomet, the first jet aircraft of the USA,
• the Mercury capsule Friendship 7, with which John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962,
• the lunar module LM-2, which has been dressed up as a replica of the Apollo 11 lander Eagle.

An important change from earlier visits: the Spirit of St. Louis, the landmark of the Milestones hall since 1976, has moved. It now hangs in the Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight gallery. According to specialist reports, the new location protects the fabric-covered aircraft better from light. Behind it hangs the Douglas World Cruiser Chicago, which took part in the first round-the-world flight by airplane in 1924. In addition there are Amelia Earhart’s red Lockheed Vega 5B, with which she flew solo across the Atlantic as the first woman in 1932, the Lockheed Sirius Tingmissartoq of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, the racer Curtiss R3C-2 and a Piper J-2 Cub.

Airline history up close

For spotters who mainly love airliners, the “America by Air” gallery is the second must-stop. It opened in a new form in October 2022 and tells how mail flights after the First World War became a mass means of transport – until the arrival of the jet.

According to the Smithsonian, the anchors of the exhibition include the Ford Trimotor, the “Tin Goose,” one of the early all-metal airliners of the USA, and the Douglas DC-3. The DC-3 made scheduled flying profitable in the 1930s – its story is told in the article on the Douglas DC-3. For a long time the nose of a Boeing 747-100 also belonged to the gallery – a nice reference point if you know the history of the Boeing 747. Whether and in what form it can be seen after the redesign is best asked on site.

The gallery also shows how airlines shaped their public image: uniforms, advertising, inflight service. If you like American airline history, you’ll find here the prehistory of companies such as American Airlines, United Airlines or the historic Pan Am.

Spaceflight, war and interactive exhibits

Even if your heart beats for aircraft: spaceflight takes up a lot of room in this building. Among the best-known pieces is the command module Columbia of Apollo 11, in which Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins flew to the Moon and back in 1969. Since July 2026 the Skylab orbital laboratory, a full-size Hubble mockup and a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket complement the new RTX Living in the Space Age Hall.

In the redesigned Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air gallery, according to specialist reports, stand a North American P-51 Mustang, a Messerschmitt Bf 109, a Grumman-licensed Wildcat (FM-1) and a Soviet Ilyushin Il-2. Since July 2025 the First World War gallery is also open again; new to the building on the Mall, according to the local press, is a Sopwith F.1 Camel.

Families should plan for the Textron How Things Fly gallery. It is considered the most interactive room in the building, with dozens of hands-on stations, a full-size Cessna Skyhawk and a wind tunnel that shows how a wing generates lift. More ideas for outings with kids are in the article Plane spotting with kids.

Photography at the Air and Space Museum

According to the museum, photos for private purposes are allowed with a phone and camera. Tripods, monopods and selfie sticks, however, are not permitted in the building, and commercial shoots need permission. For you that means: you work handheld, often with little light and many people in the frame.

Planning your visit: tickets, hours, getting there

The museum is at the address 650 Jefferson Drive SW on the south side of the National Mall. According to the museum, all visitors enter the building through the redesigned entrance on Jefferson Drive. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and the building is closed only on December 25.

• Tickets: Admission is free, but every person needs a free timed-entry ticket, regardless of age. Up to nine tickets are possible per reservation. The time slot only governs entry – how long you stay is up to you.
• Tours: Free highlight tours start at the Welcome Center, according to the museum; you learn the times there.
• Extras: IMAX theater and planetarium are part of the building.
• Getting there: The museum is in the middle of the city, and parking is scarce at the Mall. The Metro brings you close; the stations L’Enfant Plaza and Smithsonian are within walking distance.
• Security screening: There is a check at the entrance as at all Smithsonian museums. Allow a little time and leave the tripod at the hotel.

Combining: the Mall, Dulles and Gravelly Point

Washington is a multi-day destination for aviation fans. The logical addition is the Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport. That is where the collection’s large aircraft stand, including a Concorde, the SR-71 and Space Shuttle Discovery. From the observation tower you also see the traffic at Dulles – details on the location are on the spot page Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport. Dulles is a hub of United Airlines, so you see many widebody jets there.

Closer to the Mall is Reagan National Airport. At Gravelly Point Park the aircraft thunder in on final approach directly over the meadow – a contrast program to the silent Wright Flyer that you can easily slot into an afternoon.

If you are planning a bigger USA trip, you can add other large museums: the Intrepid Museum in New York on an aircraft carrier, the Museum of Flight in Seattle in the home of Boeing or the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson with its huge outdoor area.

Conclusion

For aviation fans the National Air and Space Museum is something like a place of pilgrimage. The 1903 Wright Flyer is the aircraft with which it all began – and its story with the detour via London makes it even more exciting. Around it the building gathers originals you otherwise only know from books: the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-1, the X-15, Earhart’s Vega and Apollo 11.

After the long renovation the building on the Mall looks more modern than ever. Reserve your free time slot, come early, leave the tripod at home and plan a second day for the Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles.