The Armstrong Air and Space Museum has landed their newest piece of Armstrong memorabilia.
The Learjet 28 was brought from the Armstrong Airport in New Knoxville to the museum disassembled on top of three separate semi-trailers. The museum got the plane on Armstrong's birthday in August 2020, but they have been working on getting the jet for years before that. Now they are glad to see the plane that he flew following his career at NASA.
"This is a fantastic feeling, I mean this is going to be the next chapter in the Armstrong Air and Space Museum," said Logan Rex, communications director at the Armstrong Air and Space Museum. "We get to finally tell more about Mr. Armstrong, I mean a lot of people only stop after 1969, I mean he lived another 40 years, so we get to start telling that story I mean, and this jet is a fabulous example of what Armstrong was doing his post-NASA career."
The Learjet will be reassembled over the next couple of days and placed in an outdoor exhibit. Besides having a famous pilot, the jet has its own history, because it was part of many flying records that Armstrong set.
"They were five records that had to do with the class of the aircraft, and like time to climb to a certain height, that kind of thing, they've all since been broken but what's notable is that with his distinguished long piloting career, those are the only world records in aviation he ever held. The only other world records he had were related to space travel with Apollo 11," explained Dante Centuori, executive director of Armstrong Air and Space Museum.
The museum will be dedicating the new Learjet exhibit during their 50th-anniversary celebration on July 20th.
