- After almost 40 years the Exploring Space gallery will close this summer as part of preparations for a new Space gallery, opening in autumn 2025.
- The public has until 2 June to visit this popular gallery, which will partially close after 22 April following the Easter holidays.
- Incredible objects on display include the Soyuz spacecraft that carried astronaut Tim Peake back to Earth, the spacesuit worn by the first Briton in space and a three-billion-year-old piece of the Moon.
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum
After welcoming tens of millions of visitors over almost four decades, the Science Museum today announced the upcoming closure of the Exploring Space gallery. Just a few months remain for the public to visit before the gallery closes as part of preparations for a new Space gallery which will open in autumn 2025.
Opened in 1986 and subsequently updated, the Exploring Space gallery showcases real rockets and spacecraft, inviting visitors to discover how humanity has ventured into orbit, travelled to the Moon and explored the solar system and beyond. The gallery will undergo a four-month phased closure, partially closing after Tuesday 22 April at the end of the Easter holidays and closing fully after Monday 2 June 2025. A central walkway will be maintained following the gallery’s closure, enabling visitors to access other areas of the museum.
Visitors can see the Sokol spacesuit worn by Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space, during her 1991 space flight until 24 February, when the spacesuit will be temporarily removed to undergo vital conservation work ahead of its display in the new Space gallery. This specialist textile conservation work will ensure this thirty-year-old spacesuit can continue to inspire visitors for many years to come.
Until 22 April, visitors to the gallery can marvel at the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft, which returned British astronaut Tim Peake to Earth following six months in orbit and the first spacewalk by a UK astronaut, and its 25m diameter main parachute, which is as wide as an Olympic-sized swimming pool. This spacecraft began its descent to Earth hitting the Earth’s atmosphere at more than 17,000 miles per hour and reached temperatures of more than 1500°C, leaving its outer surface melted and charred.
Significant objects from the history of rockets are on show. Visitors can walk under a British Black Arrow rocket and a United States Scout rocket suspended from the gallery’s ceiling and see the intricate detail of a RL10 rocket engine, which helped launch spacecraft to every planet in the Solar System, and a J-2 rocket engine which powered the Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum
Following the partial closure of Exploring Space from 23 April 2025, visitors will still be able to discover how we are able to live in space, to breathe, eat, drink and even go to the toilet. Many fascinating items – from space food to part of the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet and a suspended model of the Hubble Space Telescope – will remain on display in the gallery until 2 June. Visitors can also study full-size replicas of the Beagle 2 Mars lander, the Huygens Titan spacecraft and Eagle, the lander that took astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon in 1969. At the centre of the gallery, the popular Science on a Sphere installation will continue to display planetary data from our solar system on a large, suspended sphere, with a narrator sharing insights, until 2 June.
Ahead of Space opening in autumn 2025, visitors will be able to take part in Space Lates, join space-themed volunteer-led tours, take part in free and fun interactive space shows led by the museum’s Explainers, watch A Beautiful Planet in IMAX: The Ronson Theatre and see other space related objects on display around the museum as part of a self-guided tour.
Space-related objects which remain on display elsewhere in the museum include an impressive full-size telecommunications satellite, Eurostar 3000, one of the first GPS receivers, a Raspberry Pi computer which was used on the International Space Station, a satellite-based scientific instrument which precisely measures sea surface temperatures and several models of significant satellites and spacecraft.
Following the closure of Exploring Space, iconic space objects such as the Apollo 10 Command Module, which conducted the dress rehearsal in May 1969 for the Moon landings, and the Soyuz capsule will be carefully moved through the museum ready to be displayed in the new Space gallery.
NOTES TO EDITORS
The Exploring Space gallery will undergo a four-month phased closure, partially closing after Tuesday 22 April, followed by a full closure after Monday 2 June 2025 as part of preparations for a new Space gallery, opening in autumn 2025. A central walkway will be maintained following the gallery’s closure, enabling visitors to access other areas of the museum.
Space Lates
Thursday 6 March 2025
18.30 – 22.00
Standard tickets: free; VIP tickets: £12
Science Museum Lates are adults-only, after-hours theme nights. At Space Lates prepare to boldly go where few have been before as we examine the latest innovations in space technology, explore the most exciting discoveries of cutting-edge space research and delve into the detail of the most exciting space missions underway today. Discover an evening of talks, demos, interactive workshops, food and drink—not forgetting, of course, our famous silent disco in the Exploring Space gallery.
Space Gallery
The Space gallery will open in autumn 2025 in the museum’s West Hall and bring together remarkable objects that celebrate the first space age and the future of space exploration. Space will invite visitors to discover inspiring stories of exploration while offering a new perspective on significant space objects. In a world first, two human flown spacecraft (Apollo 10 and Soyuz) will be displayed alongside one another, with visitors able to examine the differences between the actual spacecraft which orbited the Moon in 1969 and travelled to the International Space Station in 2015.
The museum aims to make significant additions to its space collection during this decade, ensuring important international efforts in space exploration are better represented in the Science Museum Group Collection and in future displays in the museum.
For further information and interview requests, please contact Will Dave on william.dave@sciencemuseum.ac.uk. Images are available to download via https://we.tl/t-uP84Rjvhxe.
About the Science Museum
The Science Museum is part of the Science Museum Group, the world’s leading group of science museums that share a world-class collection providing an enduring record of scientific, technological and medical achievements from across the globe. Over the last century the Science Museum has grown in scale and scope, inspiring visitors with exhibitions covering topics as diverse as robots, codebreaking, cosmonauts and superbugs. The Science Museum was named a winner of the prestigious Art Fund Museum of the Year prize for 2020. www.sciencemuseum.org.uk. Follow on X, Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram.
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