National Air and Space Museum welcomes James Webb Space Telescope's Pathfinder and Parker Solar Probe to collection

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum welcomes two new acquisitions to the collection—the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) Pathfinder and Parker Solar Probe model. The Pathfinder is a full-scale engineering model used as the primary test article for the flown Webb spacecraft, which launched Dec. 25, 2021. The Parker Solar Probe is a full-scale model of the flown spacecraft whose mission is to study solar wind. Both acquisitions were transferred by NASA and are on display at the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. “Both the Webb and Parker Solar Probe are expanding our understanding of space,” said Samantha Thompson, space history curator at the museum. “NASA’s testing with Pathfinder was a critical component in the development of the telescope. The full-scale Parker model contains many flight spares. These two objects represent all the work that went into making these missions a success.