Verkehrshaus der Schweiz

Lucerne, Switzerland

The Swiss Transport Museum or Verkehrshaus der Schweiz, in Lucerne, is a museum, opened in July 1959 and exhibiting all forms of transport as well as communications. It is Switzerland's most popular museum. The museum also maintains a large collection of work by Hans Erni, a local painter and sculptor. There are several other attractions in the museum besides the collection: * Planetarium * IMAX * Swiss Arena, a 1:20,000 scale aerial photograph of Switzerland It also houses EURECA, a 4.5 tonne satellite among the few space objects put into space and returned safely;EURECA and its return to Earth was a cooperative effort between several Western European countries and the United States in the 1990s. A Spacelab Pallet was handed over to the Museum for permanent display on 5 March 2010. The Pallet, nicknamed Elvis, was used during the 8-day STS-46 mission, 31 July - 8 August 1992, when ESA astronaut Claude Nicollier was on board Shuttle Atlantis to deploy ESA's European Retrievable Carrier (Eureca) scientific mission and the joint NASA/Italian Space Agency Tethered Satellite System (TSS-1). The Pallet carried TSS-1 in the Shuttle's cargo bay.