Part of the National Air and Space Museum, the center's two hangars are filling rapidly with 158 large aircraft, 153 large space artifacts and thousands of small artifacts on display. With more than a million visitors a year, the center is among the world's most popular aviation museums, second only to the flagship building on the National Mall.

The Smithsonian's flight collection is the largest and most significant of its kind, with some 60,000 artifacts including many of history's... More

Part of the National Air and Space Museum, the center's two hangars are filling rapidly with 158 large aircraft, 153 large space artifacts and thousands of small artifacts on display. With more than a million visitors a year, the center is among the world's most popular aviation museums, second only to the flagship building on the National Mall.

The Smithsonian's flight collection is the largest and most significant of its kind, with some 60,000 artifacts including many of history's most rare and iconic artifacts. Fully one-third of the aircraft in the aeronautics collection are one-of-a-kind examples. The museum has two public display facilities, one on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. - National Air and Space Museum* - and this center that opened in December 2003. The latter permits the display of many more artifacts in an open, hangar-like setting including a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, a Concorde, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, the "Dash 80" prototype for the 707, the sole-surviving Boeing 307 Stratoliner and space shuttle Enterprise. (*see separate listing)

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