Virginia Air and Space Center

A YF-16 on display at the Virginia Air and Space Center.

The gallery emphasizes hands-on and immersive experiments on flight concepts such as control surfaces and propeller design, and experiences such as flight simulators. The gallery also features numerous aircraft suspended from the roof in the main gallery. Most are restored and have close ties to flight research performed at area NASA, Air Force and Naval installations.

• A McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 passenger aircraft donated by AirTran Airways dominates the gallery. Visitors can sit in cockpit, first class and coach seats, and try their hand at take off and landing of a Boeing 717 flight simulator on board. Computer monitors are mounted in the first class passenger windows displaying left and right views of the flight simulator.
• B-24D "Liberator" heavy bomber which features an onboard film giving visitors the feeling that they are riding along with the pilots.
• 1903 Wright Flyer replica
• Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor cockpit replica
• Grumman A-6 Intruder Nose Section
• Bell P-39Q Airacobra
• Convair F-106B Delta Dart
• McDonnell-Douglas F-4E Phantom II
• Lockheed F-104C Starfighter
• General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon Nose Section
• F-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle "HARV"
• Republic F-84F Thunderstreak
• Grumman-American Yankee Aircraft
• Hawker Siddeley Kestrel XV-6A
• KITFOX Model 4 Speedster
• Pershing II Missile
• Piper J-3 Cub
• Pitts Special
• Rutan VariEze homebuilt light aircraft
• Schleicher ASW 12 Glider
• Stearman N2S-3 Trainer
• UH-1M "Iroquois" Helicopter
• YF-16 "Fighting Falcon"

The Apollo 12 Command Module Yankee Clipper

Detail of Apollo 12 heat shield

Visitors enter through a room which simulates a manned launch to Mars, telling the story of a rendezvous with a Mars Transit Vehicle and arrival at the planet where doors open up into the gallery.

• Apollo 12 Command Module Yankee Clipper, which completed 45 lunar orbits in 1971[4]
• Apollo Lunar Excursion Module Simulator (LEMS), suspended by a huge gantry and used by astronauts at the Langley Research Center to practice landing on the lunar surface
• Viking Lander full-scale replica
• Gemini 10 hatch
• Mercury XIV spacecraft
• Sounding rockets similar to those launched at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility 90 miles north.
• Lunar Orbiter full-scale replica
• Rocks from Mars and the Moon
• Lunar Landing simulator

This permanent exhibit focuses on the planets within the Solar System and showcases planetary models in an array of sizes. Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune hang high above the second-floor, nearly 30 feet high. These four models are the largest in the country to be displayed inside a museum or science center. Jupiter, the largest of the models, weighs more than 750 pounds, has a diameter of 10 feet, and hangs approximately 22 feet in the air. Saturn is eight-and-a-half feet in diameter and weighs 450 pounds, with an additional 495 pounds of rings encircling the planet's body. Hanging more than 30 feet high, Saturn floats above Uranus and Neptune, which each weigh around 65 pounds. The models are composed of heavy-duty Styrofoam which is painted to resemble each of the planets. The Solar System is completed with smaller models of Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury mounted at the visitor's level. Created to be a scale model system, Earth is about the size as a soccer ball and Mercury the size of a baseball.