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Conservators are working on the 11-foot studio model of the starship Enterprise used in the original "Star Trek" series. Carl von Wodtke

A media preview for the January 24 open house at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center provided an opportunity to check out projects under­way at the nation’s official air and space restoration and preservation facility. For the first time since it was retired after World War II, the Martin B-26B Marauder Flak-Bait will be reassembled for display at the center (the forward fuselage section had been exhibited at the downtown D.C. museum for decades). Other projects currently housed in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar include the only Horten Ho-229 “bat-wing” jet bomber in existence, a Pearl Harbor veteran Sikorsky JRS-1 amphibian, the Apollo Telescope Mount backup for the Skylab missions and a portion of the NASA Langley Research Center’s 30-by-60-foot wind tunnel. And in the Emil Buehler Conservation Laboratory, conservators are working on the 11-foot studio model of the starship Enterprise used in the original Star Trek series, which has languished in the downtown museum gift shop since 2000. Next year it will take a place of honor in the newly upgraded Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall during the museum’s 40th anniversary celebration.