Pima Air & Space Museum history

The museum acquired several surplus storage buildings and erected a small, open-sided shelter for aircraft undergoing restoration in 1978.

In 1980, the museum began planning for the first large permanent display building.

Construction of “Hangar One” began in 1981 and was completed early the next year.

The silo was deactivated on November 11, 1982 and after Soviet satellites were given time to verify that both the silo and the missile that would go in it had been rendered harmless, work began to set up a visitor center at the formerly highly guarded site.

The 390th Memorial Museum opened in 1984 in its own building in the center of the museum grounds.

The Titan Missile Museum opened to the public in May 1986, ten years to the day after the opening of the Pima Air Museum, offering a rare look, both above and below ground, at the top-secret world of a nuclear missile silo.

In 1987 this finally changed with the construction of Hangar Two.

The first in 1990 was a new restoration hangar capable of containing all but the very largest of the museum’s aircraft.

So, in 1992, the name of the museum was changed to “Pima Air & Space Museum” to more accurately reflect the museum’s growing focus on space travel as well as aviation.

Finally, in 1995 the name of the foundation was changed to “The Arizona Aerospace Foundation.”

In 1999, the opening of the museum’s new Space Gallery emphasized this new focus.

In 2006, the museum began construction of an expansion to Hangar 1 that when finished more than doubled the display space of the original building.

Hangar 1 was again expanded in 2010 with the addition of 20,000 square feet of new display space and a new, greatly expanded restaurant facility.

In 2012, the museum collaborated with artists, in The Boneyard Project, to place some abandoned aircraft on display as canvases for art.

During 2015, Boeing donated to the museum the second 787 aircraft to be built.

In November 2016, Orbis International donated their first McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 Flying Eye Hospital to the museum, after receiving a second DC-10 from FedEx.

By 2020, the Pima Air & Space Museum has grown to be one of the largest aviation museums in the country (the largest non-government funded) with over 250,000 square feet of indoor display space and a collection of around 400 aircraft.