An exhibition showcasing one of the UK’s largest private collections of space artefacts will open at Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum on Saturday 14 June.

The Space Vault Exhibition contains rare and historic objects brought back to Earth from the lunar surface, low-Earth orbit and outer space, from NASA’s Apollo missions and the Soviet space era, to the American and Russian space shuttle programmes, International Space Station and SpaceX.

The announcement that Thinktank is to host The Space Vault Exhibition coincides with the 60th anniversary of cosmonaut Alexey Leonov leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes on 18 March 1965 to make the first spacewalk in history.

During the exhibition, visitors will travel through 12 curated stories of human space exploration via immersive visuals and unique artefacts.

Objects on display will include the mission checklists that saved the crew of Apollo 13 when its oxygen tank exploded, Commander Dave Scott’s spacesuit umbilical through which he communicated his first words as he stepped onto the surface of the Moon and Lunar dust from the Hadley Rille landing site of Apollo 15.

The exhibition will be complemented with an event programme consisting of various space lates using the museum’s planetarium to explore the stories behind the objects and provide a ‘cinema in the stars’ showing the greatest space movies.

General entry to the Space Vault Exhibition will be included in the admission price for Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum. For more information, visit: birminghammuseums.org.uk

Image: Image Credit: NASA. CDR Dave Scott, Apollo 15. Communications umbilical in image is on display in the Space Vault Exhibition