posted 05-18-2007 08:14 PM               

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Mercury spacecraft is ready for takeoff
The Cosmosphere prepares to send the Mercury 10 spacecraft to a new museum

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center will soon say farewell to one of its first space artifacts. Mercury spacecraft No. 10 – a NASA testing unit for the Mercury space program –will be shipped Monday to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

The spacecraft's transfer is part of a $2.4 million contract awarded to the Cosmosphere for designing Evergreen's new space museum exhibits, according to Cosmosphere Senior Vice President Jim Remar.

The Cosmosphere plans to complete the exhibitory for Evergreen's space museum in July 2008.

"Mercury spacecraft No. 10 will be one of their anchor artifacts," Remar said. "A section of Evergreen's new museum will be built around it."

The spacecraft was removed from the Cosmosphere's Hall of Space museum in September 2006 and replaced by Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury spacecraft flown by Gus Grissom in 1961 and recovered from the bottom of the ocean in 1999.

SpaceWorks, the exhibit and restoration division of the Cosmosphere, prepared the Mercury 10 spacecraft for its new exhibit.

In March, the SpaceWorks team began cleaning the interior and exterior, as well as fabricating replica parts for the capsule. They also built the spacecraft a new preservation display case.

At the Cosmosphere since the early '80s, Mercury spacecraft No. 10 is on loan from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

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