On Saturday the Science Museum relaunched its Space Gallery.
It's still on the ground floor but now right up the back near the cafe rather than second gallery in. Its old position is currently being done up to create a new 'Tomorrow' gallery, a closure which makes getting around the building temporarily much harder. They haven't moved all the formerexhibits to the new gallery, several have gone to storage in Wiltshire. But they have relocated the Apollo 10 command module away from Making The Modern World leaving a big space, which I guess is kind of appropriate.
Step through to the West Hall, an airy millennial addition to the museum stacked around an IMAX cinema.
In the previous gallery the exhibits were around the walls and above your head. In the new gallery they're all in the middle for ease of circulation, grouped into just three clusters and backlit with a blue glow. Up front are the two stars of the show, the Soyuz capsule that brought Tim Peake back to Earth and the aforementioned command module, one of only eight craft to have taken a crew round the Moon and back. It's always awe-inspiring to see, given where it's been, indeed further from Earth than any manned vehicle except Apollo 13.
The only other artefacts in this initial display are an Apollo fuel cell, a console simulator, a moon rover prototype and Helen Sharman's spacesuit, a very non-Hollywood affair which took the first Briton into space in 1991. And the only people other than Tim and Helen to be highlighted with a potted biography are the rover's designer and two women key to the mathematics and software design that ensured Apollo 11 reached the Moon. It's perhaps inspiring to focus on those who make space travel happen but also a pivot away from lauding those who undertake it.
The central display is Science on a Sphere, a dangling globe on which are projected the surfaces of the Sun, several planets and the odd moon. In the previous gallery it was somewhat sidelined but here forms a focal point complete with surrounding sofas so you can enjoy the full show in comfort. Jupiter is a bit fuzzy though, suggesting the visuals came from an earthbound telescope rather than a flyby. Alongside is a decent-sized moon rock brought back from Apollo 15, safely secured and well lit, plus a short bio of the astronaut who collected it. But the only nod to anything more distant is a single exoplanet in the projection sequence, indeed the gallery isn't so much Space as Solar System, and generally much more proximate than that.
The final display is essentially satellites and rockets, and no longer the full extent of the latter (because you can't hang anything heavy from the floor above). An angular British satellite from the early 1970s is joined by a prototype probe to Mercury, an American nanosatellite, a Welsh heatshield and what's essentially a plug for an Oxfordshire start-up. The Science Museum seems to be edging towards cutting-edge inventions these days and ousting the historical, which might well inspire young minds but won't please lovers of old stuff.
The far wall features a giant moonscape with a handful of nuggety panels, one of which answers the key question 'How much poo is there on the Moon?' And at one end is a truly disappointing display cabinet with a single exhibit, a teensy satellite docking plate, and if I'm being charitable it means they can add more gizmos later but as it stands what was the point? The gallery may lookstunning but it's a bit sparse, alas more space than Space.
