Its mission: To collect, preserve, and display the history of the Air Force Test Center, Edwards AFB, its antecedents, and the history of flight testing. The Flight Test Museum at Edwards AFB is currently closed to the general public. Those with base access can visit Tuesday thru Friday from 9:30 a.m. Blackbird Airpark is open to the public Friday, Saturday, and Sunday year round, 11:00 a.m to 4:0
0 p.m.. The Flight Test Museum is an Air Force Field Museum operating within the guidelines of the USAF Heritage Program. Its mission is to collect, interpret, preserve, and display the material history of the aerospace industry, its antecedents, and the history of flight testing in the Aerospace Valley in the High Desert of California. There are currently over 85 aircraft in the museum’s collection, with 41 on display (36 at Edwards AFB and five at Blackbird Airpark in Palmdale) and the remainder in storage or restoration. Other artifacts in the collection include aircraft propulsion systems, missiles, hardware, life support equipment, technical drawings, test reports, personal memorabilia, photographs, and wind tunnel models. A private, nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, the Flight Test Historical Foundation (FTHF) supports the Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base. It funded construction of a 12,000 square foot museum facility at Edwards, which is no longer accessible to the public since 9/11. The FTHF is in the process of raising additional funds to move the main museum outside the West Gate, to make it accessible to the general public.
