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Look up Tuesday morning and you might see this. Image courtesy of the Air and Space Museum.

On Tuesday morning, space shuttle Discovery will touch down at the Udvar-Hazy Center. But first, it’s going to take a little joyride over the District. This morning, the Air and Space Museum released the best spots to scope out the flyover. Get there between 10 and 11 a.m.—and don’t forget to tweet your money shot of the space shuttle with the hashtag #SpottheShuttle. You can head up to the Udvar-Hazy Center on Thursday, April 19 for a ceremony to welcome Discovery with all the pomp and circumstance it deserves after its 27 years of space flight.

District of Columbia

• The National Mall, including Memorial Bridge, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and the east end
• Hains Point at East Potomac Park, south of the Jefferson Memorial and the 14th Street Bridge
• The Southwest Waterfront Park

Virginia

• Long Bridge Park, located at 475 Long Bridge Dr. in Arlington
• Old Town Alexandria waterfront
• Gravelly Point, just off the George Washington Parkway, near National Airport

In Maryland

• National Harbor, just off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Prince George’s County, Md. Follow Beltway exits

For a close-up view as the carrier approaches Dulles Airport, the museum suggests shuttle spotters gather at Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center parking lot. The lot will open at 8 a.m.; there is a $15 parking charge. McDonald’s will be open for breakfast, pastries and coffee; people may also bring their own breakfast.

The IMAX camera shared majestic views of outer space to audiences down below

Starting in 1984, NASA’s space shuttle missions carried a device that visually captured space travel like never before. The IMAX camera provided sweeping, immersive views of Earth and intimate windows into the minutae of astronauts’ lives in zero gravity. The footage, collected over 17 missions, produced six movies, such as The Dream is Alive and Blue Planet—films that brought moviegoers as close as possible to the experience of what it’s actually like to orbit in space.

Now, with the shuttle program retired after two decades of service, two of the IMAX cameras come to their final destination: the Air and Space Museum, where the idea for filming space with IMAX technology originated in the first place.

“This building had barely opened in 1976 when our first director, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, had an idea,” said space shuttle curator Valerie Neal. “He proposed to NASA that an IMAX motion picture camera be taken into space aboard one of the early space shuttle flights. Having been to space himself, and having been to the moon and back, he saw that the IMAX camera could bring that experience to far more people than would ever have the chance to go into space themselves.”

One of the IMAX cameras used on the space shuttle missions, now part of the Air and Space Museum's collections. Photo courtesy of NASA/Paul E. Alers

Thirty-six years later, IMAX co-inventor Graeme Ferguson and museum Associate Director Peter Jakab presided over the donation of two of the cameras used aboard the shuttle to the museum last week. The battered black camera on display during the ceremony, which weighs about 80 pounds, made a number of journeys into space, documenting missions all the way up 1998. ”This is a marvelous acquisition for the Air and Space Museum,” Jakab said. “It’s an object that represents the merging of the creative arts with technology—which is the mission of the Smithsonian, the mission of NASA, and the mission of IMAX. It’s an object that allows us to tell a great many stories.”

To understand just how richly these stories can be told with IMAX technology, you really have to sit in front of the museum’s five-story-high IMAX screen and absorb the immense scale of outer space. Seeing a film produced with this camera is entirely different from seeing movies about space travel, or watching on a TV. The screen almost entirely fills your field of vision, so the astronaut’s views become your views, and the entire surface pops with vivid detail.

This is enabled by the cameras’ ability to take in an incredible amount of visual information, shooting film with oversized, 70 mm frames—providing more than eight times the area of traditional 35 mm film. “We focused on two things when designing the camera. The first was that it was a very large format, so it could gather a great deal of information. If it were digital, you’d say it had a lot of megapixels,” Ferguson said. “The other thing we worked very hard at was making it small, because with this format, in which a frame is about three inches wide, if you just scaled up a normal movie camera it would be enormous.”

Astronauts underwent extensive training to use the cameras, since they had been designed to be used only by expert filmmakers. “In some respects, it was an extremely primitive camera,” said Ferguson. “It had no mirror reflex—which movie cameras have had since the 30s—it had no zoom, it had no autofocus, or autoexposure, which every point-and-shoot camera like now has. It was probably the least user-friendly piece of machinery that ever went into space.”

The cameras were minimally altered for flight, with bumpers added to the sharp corners to prevent injuries. But using them was still an ordeal for astronauts: the film had to be re-loaded after every three minutes of filming and extra lighting was required to produce attractive footage.

Still, Ferguson says, astronauts were interested in getting a chance to use the camera from the very start. “They would come up to me and say, ‘Is there any chance of getting IMAX on my flight?” Ferguson says. “That really shows the power that The Dream Is Alive had in conveying the stories that the astronauts wanted to tell.”

Both of the cameras first flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. The in-cabin camera will go on display in the museum’s “Moving Beyond Earth” gallery this summer. The payload-bay IMAX camera may go on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in the future, alongside the Space Shuttle Discovery, which will be welcomed into the collection on April 19.

General James F. Amos commemorates the Marine aviation centennial. Image courtesy of the US Marine Corps.

Tuesday, April 10 What a Face!

Grab a pencil or paintbrush and head over to the Anacostia Community Museum’s portraiture workshop, led by artist and special educator Jay Coleman. Coleman will go over proportion, arbitrary color, and other concepts that lend perspective to depicting the human figure. Free. 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Anacostia Community Museum.

Wednesday, April 11 IUE: The Little Satellite That Could

The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) was the first experiment to explore the full range of ultraviolet radiation from the universe, which is inaccessible from the ground. Discover how it blazed new trails in space exploration in this lecture by astrophysicist Andrea K. Dupree, who has studied the sun and other stars using IUE. Come early for a pre-lecture film and educational activities. Free reservations required. Lecture starts at 8:00 p.m. Air and Space Museum.

Thursday, April 12 Semper Fidelis

Celebrate a hundred years of Marine aviation with General James F. Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps and the senior Marine and Navy aviator. General Amos will reflect on his career and Marine aviation’s long history of innovation in defense. Free tickets required. 8:00 p.m. Air and Space Museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Buzz Lightyear returned to Earth on Discovery in 2009. Image courtesy of NASA/Tony Landis.

“NOT A FLYING TOY,” blares the commercial that finally jolts Buzz Lightyear out of his delusions of being a real space commander in the 1995 movie Toy Story. NASA and Disney-Pixar changed that in 2008, launching the action figure into the final frontier on space shuttle Discovery. For 15 months (setting a duration record), Buzz orbited the Earth in the International Space Station. Now that he’s been back on solid ground for a couple years, Buzz Lightyear is heading to “Moving Beyond Earth” at the Air and Space Museum, an exhibition that recreates the experience of living and working in space.

This afternoon, John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative officer and founder, officially donated Buzz to the museum.  The 12-inch action figure will be on display starting this summer, in a new mock-up of the internal cabin of space shuttle Discovery. “We hope Buzz will feel quite at home, given that that’s the vehicle he went to space,” curator Margaret Weitekamp says.

Lasseter, who dreamed up Buzz’s character, says he has always been in awe of space exploration. When he was trying to think of the coolest possible toy to put in Toy Story, astronauts came immediately to mind. To him, Buzz’s trip to the International Space Station makes for a “full circle” story.

“I started crying when Discovery connected to the International Space Station,” he admitted at the presentation. “There’s a tube that the astronauts go through to get into the space station. They didn’t carry Buzz. They opened his wings, they put his arms out, and Buzz Lightyear flew, in space, himself, up that tube into the International Space Station.”

Buzz’s journey to space wasn’t just a joyride; Disney and NASA teamed up to use Buzz as a teaching tool to get kids excited about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). While he was living on the Space Station, Buzz actually went out into space with the astronauts, who used him for demonstrations of gravity, weightlessness, and space life, which were then beamed back to earth. Since he’d already captured the imaginations of so many people, Buzz was the perfect candidate for the job. Disney executive Duncan Wardle, who first pitched the idea of sending Buzz to space, said that he thinks the educational program was successful because Buzz speaks to people’s “sense of adventure.”

“As a child in the ’60s, I was the model of the child in the Toy Story film,” Wardle said in a phone interview yesterday. “I watched John Wayne movies. Davey Crockett. I had the hat. I had the tassels. But one day, we were brought down in what was the middle of the night in England, and my mother switched on the black and white television. My mother’s immortal words, before Neil Armstrong descended the steps with his immortal words, were ‘Sit down, shut up and pay attention. Something important’s about to happen.’ And from that day on, cowboys were history and I fell in love with space.”

Now that he’s joined Air and Space, Buzz can continue his mission of educating thousands of children every year. “I think it’ll give kids and families a new way to connect to those bigger stories that we’re telling about the space shuttle and the International Space Station,” says curator Weitekamp.

Buzz has had a long and bumpy journey to the museum; in fact, he almost missed the launch entirely. “Much earlier than we thought, probably about six months before launch, we got a call from Johnson Kennedy Space Center. They insisted he arrive the next morning, catching us a bit by surprise,” Wardle remembers. “So we went shopping.” But because the action figure had gone out of production a few months before, they couldn’t find one at any store. Finally, while Wardle was scouring stores, he got a call from his wife, who had found the dusty space ranger under their son’s bed. “All I heard on the other end of the phone was Buzz’s voice saying “To infinity and beyond,” he says. Soon enough, the catchphrase came true.

Buzz Lightyear will go on view in the “Moving Beyond Earth” gallery this summer.

Amelia Earhart was a pioneer in women's aviation. Her disappearance during her attempt to fly around the world has perplexed America for nearly 75 years. Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

The distance from New Guinea and Howland Island is 2,556 miles. There are no landmarks. There is nothing but water and sky.

On July 2, 1937, somewhere between these two locations, Amelia Earhart and navigator, Fred Noonan, were crammed together in the twin-engined, Lockheed “Electra,” in mid-attempt to become the first to fly around the world at the equator.

At about 17:00 hours, they radioed their position: somewhere over the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. They were low on fuel; communication with the U.S. Coastguard was not planned properly. Three hours later, Earhart radioed again. It was the last anyone ever heard from her.

Fast-forward nearly 75 years and Earhart’s name is still making headlines. Today, U.S. government officials met scientists and historians from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), to discuss the investigation of an alternative scenario—one that suggests Earhart may have survived as a castaway.

The new search is backed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and funded by the Discovery Channel and is planned to coincide with the 75th anniversary of her disappearance. Scientists will use high-tech underwater vehicles to search for remains of Earhart and her plane near the remote island of Nikumaroro; a location researchers say is close to where Earhart’s plane went down.

And while new interest in Amelia Earhart’s disappearance has resurfaced as of late, Dorothy Cochrane, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum says “Lady Lindy’s” legacy has always held a place in the Smithsonian Institution.

“Everybody has a theory, some more serious than others, but it’s still the greatest mystery of the 20th century,” she says, “and looks like it’s heading into the 21st century.”

In fact, there are several artifacts from Earhart on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum and at the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center. And this June, “One Life: Amelia Earhart,” a new exhibit will open at the National Portrait Gallery.

“People come [to the National Air and Space Museum] and the first thing they see is her bright, red airplane,” Cochrane says. “And they can say, ‘That’s Amelia Earhart’s airplane. Inside that machine is where she became the first woman to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.’”

The Smithsonian Institution is home to countless artifacts from Earhart’s life: her flying leather jacket—the quintessential part of a pilot’s outfit, some of the books she wrote after she completed her flights, a radio she used in her first voyage over the Pacific.

The Udvar Hazy Center goes further—housing a flight-suit of hers, a menu from one of the various dinners she attended after completing a mission—even a pair of scissors used to cut her hair. Cochrane says by displaying these items and telling Earhart’s story the Smithsonian Institution has kept her alive.

“These are things that Amelia Earhart touched—she tuned this radio when she was flying from Hawaii to California,” Cochrane says. “These are tangible pieces of history that relate to this marvelous woman and what she did for aviation.”

The new exhibit at the Portrait Gallery delves into the life of “Lady Lindy” beyond aviation, providing examples of her work as a champion for women’s rights. In this one-room display, her biography is told through a series of portraits and a small collection of items—her pilot’s license, the first earned by a woman, a leather flying helmet and smelling salts.

Earhart founded a pilot program for women called, the Ninety-Nines, (to represent the 99 women who were its first members) and served as a faculty member at Purdue as a women’s career counselor and an adviser in aeronautics. She also served as the aviation editor for Cosmopolitan and encouraged other women to learn to fly urging mothers to allow their daughters to take lessons—a radical suggestion for a woman growing up in the 1920s and 1930s.

“She’s really the epitome of the modern woman of that era, making up her own career and her own mind. That’s what we try to portray here,” Cochrane says. “If her plane were found, it wouldn’t change our story, but it certainly would bring closure to hers.”

“One Life: Amelia Earhart” will be at the Portrait Gallery, June 29, 2012 through May 27, 2013.

Update: Amelia Earhart was not the first women to earn a pilot’s license. That distinction goes to Raymonde de Laroche of France, who received her license in 1910.