(Photo source: Washington Post) An array of hardwareĪutodesk and the Smithsonian used seven different scanning technologies on the command module. “There isn’t an object in a museum that has been scanned at this density, with this number of technologies,” said Mathews.

The project took two sessions to complete, the second one lasting eight days for a team of four employees from the Smithsonian and four from Autodesk. It’s probably one of the most challenging objects ever scanned, and we need some help.” “They said, Hey, we’re only given so many days of access time with this. “So they took it out and we got the call,” said Brian Mathews, VP Technology and Architecture, Product Development Group at Autodesk. This gave the museum a rare, “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to scan their crown jewel, the inside of which no one has seen for nearly five decades. Remodeling meant they had to move the command module, and moving it meant taking it out of the thick plastic case where it has rested since the museum was built in the ‘70s. The Smithsonian is in the process of remodeling the Air and Space Museum, where Apollo 11 is kept. But none of this prepared them for the challenge of scanning the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia. A preliminary scan of the Apollo 11 command moduleĪutodesk has helped the Smithsonian to digitize the Cosmic Buddha, produced a digital life mask of President Obama, 3D scan the Wright brothers’ first working airplane, and even built the 3D.si.edu website where many of the Smithsonian’s 3D models are made available to the public.

Autodesk memento model thickness