The Moon Room

At the refreshed National Archives core exhibition experience (opening late 2025), a highlight is the “Moon Room,” an immersive space that tells the story of American innovation through the long-reverberating case study of the first manned explorations of the Moon.

Photographs of the surface of the moon, drawn from the archives, are below the visitors’ feet and projected on media wall surfaces. By entering this immersive experience, visitors “inhabit” NARA records.

The media wall narrative highlights surprising and unfamiliar government-related projects, discoveries, and innovations related to our manned missions to the Moon.

An interactive table is flanked by seemingly unrelated, physical objects. Visitors place these objects on specific activation zones on the digital surface, triggering NARA content related to the object’s history.