The 50th anniversary of the moon landing is almost upon us, and Washington, D.C.’s National Air and Space Museum has big plans in the works to celebrate.
For the Air and Space museum’s show, full-motion projection-mapping artwork will appear on the Washington Monument, alongside screens showing archival footage of the first moon landing. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
The Smithsonian institution has a slate of activities scheduled to commemorate the big day, and from now through July 20, the Washington Monument will be taking the spotlight—literally. From July 16 to 18, for two hours each night, a full-size projection of the nearly 400-foot-tall Saturn V rocket will appear on the east side of the landmark building. The projection is a run-up to the weekend’s main event: a 17-minute show called Apollo 50: Go for the Moon, combining full-motion projection-mapping artwork and archival footage to recreate the Apollo 11 launch right there on the monument’s face.
With three show times across both nights, the whole thing is free and open to the general public. Viewing areas have been set up on the National Mall, in front of the Smithsonian Castle between 9th and 12th streets, and they’re fully wired for sound, with projection screens and a 40-foot reproduction of the Kennedy Space Center countdown clock.
The Washington monument will get a temporary makeover in honor of the lunar-landing anniversary. Image by Checubus/Shutterstock
Conceived by the museum and executed by 59 Productions, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of the Interior, the historic show required some serious hoop-jumping to achieve liftoff. Congress had to request permission for displays to appear on the mall and the monument itself, and it took a unanimous, bipartisan joint resolution to get things off the ground.
“The Washington Monument is a symbol of our collective national achievements and what we can and will achieve in the future,” Ellen Stofan, the museum’s John and Adrienne Mars director, said in a news release. “It took 400,000 people from across the 50 states to make Apollo a reality. This program celebrates them, and we hope it inspires generations too young to have experienced Apollo firsthand to define their own moonshot.”
For more information, visit airandspace.si.edu.
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