Piece of Space History to Star in Powerhouse Parramatta's First Exhibition

A heavy piece of space history is heading to Sydney, Australia. A test module used during the Apollo space program — the mission that put the first humans on the Moon in 1969 — will be the star of the opening exhibition at the new Powerhouse Parramatta museum. Called boilerplate #1224, this rare object weighs 4.5 tonnes and has never been displayed in Australia before. It will sit at the centre of a space-themed exhibition called Task Eternal, which features around 850 items.

Boilerplate #1224 was not built to fly to the Moon. Instead, it was a test version of the Apollo command module, which is the part of the spacecraft where the astronauts sat. Scientists used it to run 102 ignition tests to make sure the real spacecraft would be safe for people to travel in. These tests were extremely important because of a deadly accident that nearly stopped the Moon mission before it even got started.

In 1967, a fire broke out inside an Apollo command module during a ground test. Three astronauts were inside at the time, and all three died. Investigators found that a spark in a wire had set off a fire in the cabin, which was filled with 100 percent oxygen. Oxygen makes fires burn much faster and hotter, so the blaze spread quickly. This tragic event became known as the Apollo 1 fire.

After the Apollo 1 disaster, scientists worked hard to fix the problems that caused the fire. One big change was switching to a mix of oxygen and nitrogen inside the spacecraft. This mixture is less likely to catch fire and is closer to the air we breathe on Earth. Boilerplate #1224 was used to test these new safety changes and make sure the spacecraft was ready for astronauts to fly safely.

Teasel Muir-Harmony is a historian at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in the United States. She says that without the lessons learned from Apollo 1, humans would never have made it to the Moon in 1969. 'The boilerplate #1224, in particular, was used to figure out how to make the spacecraft safe,' she said. She added that the air mixture change is something NASA continues to use even today.

Those same safety lessons proved important again during the Apollo 13 mission. On that flight, an oxygen tank exploded, forcing the astronauts to power down the spacecraft and take shelter in the lunar module. Dr. Muir-Harmony said the explosion would have been far worse if the Apollo 1 lessons had not already been put into practice. She hopes visitors to the exhibition will see the value of not giving up when things go wrong.

Getting boilerplate #1224 to Australia was no easy task. Workers built a special steel-framed cage and cradle to safely ship the module from the United States. It took 43 days for the object to complete its journey across the Pacific Ocean. Once it arrived in Sydney, a conservation team carefully unpacked it at the Powerhouse's Castle Hill facility in the city's north-west.

Powerhouse conservator Karen Rosenthal and her team are now working to restore the boilerplate to how it looked during its testing days. That means repainting it and putting the original NASA logo back on. 'It's such a rare object — a large piece of space technology that we don't see here in Australia,' Ms. Rosenthal said. She called the whole process a fantastic experience for everyone involved.

Australia actually has a special connection to the Apollo missions. The country played an important role in sending live television pictures of the Moon landing to the world. In fact, Australians were among the first people on Earth to watch the Moon landing as it happened, because the broadcast signal came to Australia before anywhere else. This is a little-known piece of history that makes the exhibition even more meaningful for Australian visitors.

The Task Eternal exhibition will include many other exciting objects beyond the boilerplate. A parachute from Apollo 17 — the last mission to land on the Moon — will be on display, along with a rock sample box used on Apollo 15. A camera belonging to astronaut John Glenn, which took the first colour photographs of Earth from space during the 1962 Friendship 7 mission, will also be featured. There will also be a small silicon wafer etched with messages from members of the public, which was designed to be sent into deep space as part of a project called HUMANS.

Powerhouse Parramatta is expected to open before the end of the year. Along with Task Eternal, the museum will host four other exhibitions, including one that looks back at the shopping malls of Western Sydney. Exhibition curator Jaklyn Babington said the Apollo boilerplate is one of the largest objects in Task Eternal and sits right at its heart. She hopes that seeing it in person will help Australians feel connected to one of the greatest achievements in human history.