museum also signed a formal restoration loan agreement with 

 the Kansas Cosmophere and Space Center in Hutchinson, 

 Kansas, for the complete reassembly and restoration to near 

 splashdown condition of the Apollo 13 Command Module 

 Odyssey. The Command Module was disassembled by NASA 

 for various test and training purposes in the 1970s. Its com- 

 ponents had been scattered at several locations. This loan 

 agreement and the location and transfer of all known com- 

 ponents to Kansas will enable the long term preservation of 

 this historic artifact, which attracted much attention this past 

 year as a result of the release of the film Apollo I}. 



Major acquisitions range from an early model Raven hot air 

 balloon of the sort that sparked interest in sport ballooning in 

 the 1950s to the rhinestone-studded wings worn by Roscoe 

 Turner, a leading racing pilot and aviation personality of the 

 1930s. Other important collections management initiatives in- 

 cluded a reinventory of the extensive NASM collection of 

 unifotms, insignia, and other items of flight materiel. 



Two temperature and humidity controlled boxes for storage 

 of artifact and archival collections were installed at the Paul E. 

 Garber Facility. The boxes were acquired without charge from 

 the National Archives and Records Administration. The Ram- 

 sey Fund provided a grant to outfit the boxes with compact 

 shelving and electrical connections. 



The first biennial inventory was conducted to verify the 

 location and documentation of artifact collections. Ap- 

 proximately 0.5% of the collection was selected at random for 

 the survey. Only four objects from this sample remain unac- 

 counted for. 



Important loans have included the Corona camera and 

 Corona capsule model to the National Reconnaissance Office. 

 The museum loaned four additional aircraft, several trophies, 

 flight clothing, commemorative stamps and medals, parts of 

 aircraft, and paintings to other museums. 



Research 



The Museum's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies con- 

 tinued its research in Earth's drylands and studies assessing 

 anthropogenic changes to the Earth's surface as part of the 

 Institution's Global Change Research Program. Field work in 

 southwest Egypt by Ted Maxwell and colleagues at the 

 University of Arizona, during the 1996 season, concentrated 

 on detailed studies of two areas at the western margin of the 

 Kiseiba-Dungul depression where the Space Shuttle Radar 

 (SIR-C) had detected a network of drainage not visible on the 

 ground. Pat Jacobberger-Jellison continued her studies of en- 

 vironmental stability and change at the Mpala Research Sta- 

 tion, central Kenya. Jim Zimbelman and colleagues published 

 the tesults of a study of sand deposits in the Mojave Desert in 

 the southwestern United States demonstrating that sand is 

 ttansported along distinct paths, crossing topographic barriers 

 and several adjacent drainage basins. The investigation of the 

 trends in forest loss and damage due to air pollution in the 

 Krusne Hory/Erzgebirge Mountains of the Czech Republic 



and Germany being conducted by Tom Watters, Andy 

 Johnston, Mike Tuttle, and Fred Engle, and in conjunction 

 with colleagues in the Czech Republic is near completion. 

 The Center is a member of the Baltimore-Washington 

 Regional Collaboratory which consists of a series of partner- 

 ship research initiatives supporting investigations into land 

 use in Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan area and the im- 

 pact on its environment. 



The Center's research in planetary geology and geophysics 

 continues to encompasses a wide range of topics. An impor- 

 tant component of this research involves the study of ter- 

 restrial analogs. Jim Zimbelman, Bruce Campbell, and Bob 

 Craddock continued geologic mapping of the areas on Mars 

 and Venus. Bruce Campbell published the results of a study of 

 terrestrial lava flow surface roughness and depolarized radar 

 scatteting. Tom Watters and a colleague at USGS are, using 

 photoclinometry, investigating tectonic features believed to 

 be the results of thrust faulting on Mars and Mercury. Ted 

 Maxwell and Bob Craddock continued their study of the an- 

 cient terrain on Mars that may have been modified during a 

 early, wet Martian climate. Bruce Campbell, Bob Craddock, 

 and Tom Watters are investigating surface material proper- 

 ties, crater degradation, and tectonic features on the Moon 

 using data returned by the Clementine spacecraft. 



The launch of the Infrared Space Observatory in November 

 marked the culmination for the staff of the Laboratory for 

 Astrophysics of years of participation in the design and 

 development of this new satellite, which extends the dis- 

 coveries of the IRAS satellite (launched in 1983) on display in 

 the "Stars'' gallery. Staff have participated in numerous dis- 

 coveries and associated atticles, including first discovery of 

 water in space, first discovery of carbon atoms in deep mter- 

 stellar space, discovery of deuterium in Saturn, and the dis- 

 covery of evidence to counter claims of "black holes" in 

 peculiar galaxies. During this period staff also led a program 

 that measured the winds on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The 

 staffs discovery, from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory of the 

 first lasers in space, continued to get wide press coverage during 

 this year, with a featured reviewed article in Science magazine. 



Education Programs. Symposiums, and Lectures 



Staff members continued efforts to enrich the museum's 

 World Wide Web site. The Center and the museum's Educa- 

 tion Services Department continue to work together to 

 develop on-line materials and educational activities. An 

 electronic version of the new "How Things Fly" gallery went 

 on-line and on-line versions of the "Exploring the Planets" 

 and "Looking at Earth" galleries are being developed. These 

 two museum departments also collaborated on "Mars Day!", a 

 commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Viking landing 

 on Mars. Museum staff and other experts interacted with the 

 general public, providing hands-on activities and information 

 relating to the museum's ongoing Mars research and photo 

 collections, missions to Mars, and Mars spacecraft. 



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