Old spacesuits get new lease on life

Nature : The spacesuits worn by the first astronauts are being moved from their current home in Maryland to the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. While the new facility will provide a much better environment for the suits, getting them there intact was a puzzle for conservators, writes Nicola Jones for Nature. Lisa Young, one of the conservators working on the project, came up with a unique solution: transport the suits in retrofitted coffins used by the airline industry. She and her colleagues lined the coffins to make them waterproof and equipped them with seat belts so the suits wouldn’t move in transit. The suits’ new home will keep them—along with the space shuttles Enterprise and Discovery and roughly 1200 other items such as spare spacesuit gloves, memorabilia, trophies, and artwork—under one roof with lab facilities for visiting scientists and the staff conservators. The conservation work and storage in the newer facility should allow the suits to last another 50 years—a significant improvement over the 20 more years they would likely have lasted otherwise.