7 Years, $1 Billion: Air and Space Museum's Final Gallery Opens

The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., opened its final renovated gallery, "At Home in Space," on October 30, completing a rebuild that took seven years and cost nearly $1 billion, according to Ars Technica's November 2, 2026 report.

The new gallery is the last of the museum's space-themed exhibits to reopen after the building-wide renovation, Ars Technica reported. It focuses on more than 25 years of continuous human presence aboard the International Space Station, a figure museum curator Jennifer Levasseur cited directly in describing the gallery's timeline.

What opened at the museum this week?

"At Home in Space" is the exhibit that closes out the Smithsonian's seven-year renovation cycle, per Ars Technica. The gallery greets visitors with an overhead mock-up of an astronaut on a robotic arm, set against a full-size photo mural of the ISS, Levasseur told Ars Technica during a tour. The astronaut figure wears an Expedition 60 mission patch, a detail Levasseur said was an intentional clue to the identity of the real-life astronaut the mock-up represents, though she declined to name that person on the record.

How long did the renovation take and what did it cost?

The full project ran seven years, concluding with the October 30 opening, Ars Technica reported. The Smithsonian's total renovation spend approached $1 billion, per the same report. Those two figures — seven years and nearly $1 billion — frame the scale of the rebuild relative to a single museum building on the National Mall.

What story does "At Home in Space" tell?

Levasseur described the gallery's arc to Ars Technica as a three-part structure. The first segment covers the preparation era and the space shuttle program. The middle segment covers the International Space Station, where Levasseur said the museum now has more than 25 years of long-duration spaceflight experience to draw on. The closing segment, in Levasseur's words, "carries that story forward" into the next steps of human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit.

Ars Technica described the gallery's overall sweep as a 50-plus-year journey, tracing how humans learned to live and work continuously in space and setting up the museum's narrative for future Moon and Mars bases.

Which galleries opened before it in the renovation?

"At Home in Space" follows a sequence of space-themed reopenings over the past several years, according to Ars Technica's reporting. The sequence included:

• "Destination Moon," covering the first US astronauts to reach space and land on the Moon
• "Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets," covering robotic probes that have explored every planet in the solar system
• The "RTX Living in the Space Age Hall," covering how space technology and infrastructure affect daily life on Earth
• "Futures in Space," covering approaches to spaceflight in coming years

Ars Technica noted that "At Home in Space" follows thematically from an earlier gallery called "Moving Beyond Earth," extending that gallery's focus on the shift from visiting space to living there.

Why does the museum end its renovation on the ISS story?

The placement of "At Home in Space" as the final gallery to reopen was not incidental, based on how Levasseur framed it to Ars Technica. She described the ISS as the middle chapter of a continuous narrative that starts with 1970s-era preparation work and the shuttle program, and that pushes forward into whatever comes after the station's operational life. The more than 25 years of continuous human habitation aboard the ISS, as Levasseur put it, gives the museum its evidentiary base for projecting what sustained off-Earth living could look like on the Moon or Mars.

Ars Technica's report did not include a specific closing date for ISS operations or a cost breakdown for the renovation by individual gallery, so those figures are not included here.

The gallery's visual anchor — the spacewalking astronaut mock-up above the ISS mural — is designed to pull visitors in before they encounter the denser exhibit content, Levasseur told Ars Technica. The Expedition 60 patch on that mock-up ties the display to a specific, real ISS crew rotation, even though the curator did not confirm which astronaut from that mission the figure depicts.

For readers tracking the museum's rollout, the October 30 opening date marks the formal completion point of the renovation's space-focused wing, per Ars Technica, following the staggered openings of the four preceding galleries over the prior several years.