On April 13, the museum reopened to the public in its new location at Building 126. Originally located in Hangar One, the museum closed in 2002 because of PCB contamination.

During the museum's closure, staff negotiated with NASA for a suitable space to house its aviation artifacts and as a result acquired a new home near the hangar.

With 5,000 square feet of display space, the new museum has plenty of room to relay the history of Moffett Field since it opened on April 13, 1933.

"It's designed to tell the story of Moffett Field and the history of lighter-than-air craft [dirigibles]," says Red Brooks, a retired Navy captain and the museum's curator.

Photographs, models and relics capture the field's evolution from the days of the Macon dirigible in the early 1930s to the time when patrol and transport squadrons called the base home until 1999. That's when NASA took over the space.

The museum contains several one-of-a-kind items, such as a photograph of the late actor Jimmy Stewart when he was stationed at the base during World War II and a fragment of the outer covering of the U.S.S. Akron; a dirigible that crashed in 1933, killing Moffett Field's namesake, Adm. William A. Moffett.

But not all of the museum's display items are original. The U.S.S. Macon, because it suffered a crash landing and because it was 785 feet long and weighed 400,000 pounds, could not fit in the building. So the museum has a small replica instead.

"Everything is to scale," Brooks says. Even the miniature pilots and bystanders in the scene are designed to be exactly the correct height, he says.

The display areas are divided into different sections, each representing a different period of Moffett Field's past.

The museum will be open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free. Museum-goers must present photo identification at the entrance gate. For more information, call 650.603.9827.