Sharing Our Space Heritage: Care and Conservation of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Fylingdales Archive Collections

This project will develop new, place-centred space histories by establishing a UK-US knowledge exchange between the Fylingdales Archive and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, a world leader in space heritage conservation. For over sixty years, RAF Fylingdales on the North York Moors has tracked an increasing number of satellites in Low Earth Orbit, supporting its ballistic missile early warning mission. This expertise has fostered a globally significant space surveillance industry, yet it remains largely invisible, overshadowed by regional narratives of industrial decline. The Fylingdales Archive and Smithsonian’s collections are mutually entwined: the same engineers and electronics corporation, Radio Corporation of America, who built RAF Fylingdales also developed the Apollo Lunar Module’s navigation systems, now a key exhibit in the Smithsonian’s Apollo Collections. Bringing these collections into dialogue will challenge assumptions about where space history happens, generating new curatorial insights into how people and places have shaped the Space Age. My placement at the Smithsonian builds on the AHRC-funded Turning Fylingdales Inside Out project (AH/S013067/1), where I was Co-Investigator and helped establish the Fylingdales Archive. The Smithsonian’s expertise will enhance the archive’s preservation, while the archive itself offers new interpretative value for the Smithsonian’s Rocket and Missile Collection and Baker-Nunn Satellite Tracking Collection. By linking these collections, this project will produce digital published outputs (see below) and will lay the foundation for future curatorial collaborations, ensuring hidden histories of space surveillance are preserved and made accessible to a global audience.