SEATTLE, May 11, 2017--On Thursday, May 18 at 10 a.m. The Museum of Flight welcomes members of the press to an exclusive preview of its new exhibit about the 1960s Space Race, APOLLO. There will also be an announcement about a late-breaking addition to the exhibit. The guest speaker is explorer David Concannon, who helped lead Bezos Expeditions' deep sea quest to find and recover the exhibit's centerpiece F-1 rocket engine that launched Apollo 12 to the Moon.


On May 20, Jeff Bezos will meet with grade school students for a private event in the APOLLO exhibit at 9 a.m. to answer their questions about space exploration and the expedition to find and recover the F-1 engines. It will conclude shortly before the public opening at 10 a.m. Media are welcome to attend.

APOLLO preview speakers include:
David Concannon, Explorer Consulting, LLC Founder
Doug King, The Museum of Flight President and CEO
Matt Hayes, The Museum of Flight Executive Vice President
Geoff Nunn, The Museum of Flight Adjunct Space Curator
Seth Margolis, The Museum of Flight Director of the William A. Helsell Education Department

There will be interview opportunities with each of the speakers at the press preview, plus members of the exhibit team. Media are also welcome to sample VR Immersive Education's new Apollo 11 VR experience that will be offered at the Museum's May 20-21 SpaceFest 2017: The Lunar Legacy.
Trailer for Apollo 11 VR
VR Immersive Education Apollo 11 VR

About David Concannon
David Concannon has nearly 25 years of experience organizing and leading expeditions, including the last expedition to explore the Titanic using deep submersibles and the Apollo F-1 Engine Search and Recovery Project. He has served as a legal and operational advisor to several international expeditions, including six expeditions to the R.M.S. Titanic and two expeditions to Mt. Everest.

Saturday Morning with Jeff Bezos
On Saturday, May 20 at 9 a.m., Jeff Bezos will meet with about 50 grade school and middle school students from around Washington state for some spaceflight show-and-tell in the Museum's new APOLLO exhibit. Bezos will talk about the adventures of the Apollo missions to the Moon, the expedition to find and recover the F-1 Moon rocket engines, and what inspires him to help humanity's new excursions from Earth. An open question and answer session with the students will run from 9-9:45 a.m.

The event is not open to the public, but the media is invited to attend. Mr. Bezos will not be available for interviews with the press, but will be answering a wide range of questions from the students, and reporters are invited to film, photograph, and/or report on the session.


Please RSVP to Ted Huetter, Senior Public Relations Manager, thuetter@museumofflight.org

About the APOLLO Exhibit
The US vs USSR Space Race of the 1960s was a time of superlatives as the space agencies of each country used their best and their brightest to make the next step closer to putting footprints on the Moon. APOLLO, the exhibit, reflects those times with artifacts both towering and diminutive, each with powerful stories of the people behind them. APOLLO is about individuals taming powerful new technologies to fulfill impossible dreams. The exhibit will be the first public display of the long-lost rocket engines that launched the Apollo astronauts to the Moon.

The historic Apollo 12 and 16 F-1 engines that boosted the might Saturn V Moon rockets were lost at the bottom of the sea for 43 years until discovered and raised by Seattle-based Bezos Expeditions in 2013. The sunken remains were our last missing links to the first adventures to another world. The aged and sculptural artifacts still show the scars of their service and of resting in the depths. They will now punctuate the Museum's new exhibit about the dramatic adventure of spaceflight through the post-Apollo ebb in the 1970s. For comparison, a full-scale F-1 rocket engine, on loan from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, will also be displayed.

The exhibit will feature many other unique artifacts from the Space Race, including Moon rocks, a lunar roving "moon buggy," the only Viking Mars lander on Earth, space suits and the first Apollo command module.


May 20-21 SpaceFest 2017: The Lunar Legacy
The Museum 4th annual SpaceFest has a lunar theme to complement APOLLO's opening weekend with programs featuring astronauts, rocket scientists, undersea explorers, lunar VR experiences and Moon movies
the first public display of the long-lost rocket engines that launched the Apollo astronauts to the Moon.


Image: Apollo Command Module at The Museum of Flight. Ted Huetter/The Museum of Flight, Seattle.
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