The USS Enterprise is getting beamed up!
The original “Star Trek” starship is moving from the basement of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to the main floor Tuesday.
“It’s been brought into the light because over time, its historical significance has grown,” Malcolm Collum, the museum’s conservator, told The Washington Post.
Before making its debut upstairs, Collum’s team restored the spacecraft.
“This is a 50-year-old model and it was starting to show structural failures,” Collum said. “It made me really nervous. It could have catastrophic fallen apart.”
Using set photographs and stills from the episodes, they made a series of upgrades including a new paint job, adding some decals and replicating the original deflector dish that was lost before Paramount donated the ship to the Smithsonian in 1974.
“The museum made a not-very-accurate replacement,” Collum told the newspaper. “We referred to it as the salad bowl.”
They also upgraded the internal lighting to an LED-powered system after the original bulbs caused a fire in the wooden model.
“When you turn on the lights, it just brings the ship to life,” Collum said. “It’s an incredible transformation.”
“Star Trek,” starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley, premiered in September 1966.