We are thrilled to have joined Google Arts & Culture, enabling people across the world to experience the museum in Google Street View for the very first time and explore our critically acclaimed Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age exhibition. Almost 100 fascinating objects from our collections are also now featured on the Google Arts & Culture website.
The Cosmonauts exhibition, which was officially opened by Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space), brought together the most significant collection of Russian spacecraft and artefacts ever shown in the UK to share the story of humanity’s first steps into the cosmos.
In this new online exhibition, viewers can watch a tour of the exhibition with the museum’s director Ian Blatchford, curators Alexandra Smirnova, Natalia Sidlina and Doug Millard, and astronaut Dr Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space.
Many objects and artworks from the exhibition can be seen in detail, including Vostok 6 – the spacecraft that carried Valentina Tereshkova into space and back in 1963 – the towering LK-3 lunar lander, an ejector seat for a dog and a space toilet.
As well as exploring the remarkable story of scientific and technological ingenuity that launched the space age ion this online exhibition, viewers can also experience the Cosmonauts exhibition in new Google Street View imagery of the Science Museum.
In late 2015, the Science Museum was photographed for Google Street View and now for the first time anyone can take a virtual stroll through the museum.
Sadly while taking these photographs we didn’t get the chance to use this Google Street View trike which is on display in the Information Age gallery.
The photographs were captured at the start of a period of rapid change for the Science Museum, before the closure of our Medicine, Computing & Mathematics, Agriculture and Measuring Time galleries (click the links to see them in Street View) and before building work had begun for Mathematics: The Winton Gallery and Wonderlab: The Statoil Gallery.
This photography provides a valuable record of the museum in 2015 and as further photography is captured, the Street View time capsule mode will enable viewers to travel through time and revisit old exhibitions and galleries.
So sit back and enjoy a walk around the museum from where ever you are, when ever you like.