Mercury Hatch

Mercury spacecraft #19 is displayed with a Mercury spacecraft hatch (it's unclear as to the hatch was originally intended for this particular Mercury spacecraft).

This hatch previously toured the country with the Liberty Bell 7 travelling exhibit. As with the Mercury spacecraft itself, the museum displays the hatch so as to restrict the visitors view to only two sides (its interior face and one edge); during its nation-wide tour, the visitor was afforded a view of the hatch's exterior.

The hatch's Smithsonian collections page notes that the hatch was modified with a micrometeoroid experiment built by Bendix, but never flew in space.