ARIES (Authentic Representation of an Independent Earth Satellite)

From The Space Library

The space laboratory, designed by the Martin Company, called ARIES, for Authentic Representation of an Independent Earth Satellite had four compartments, contained a complete space kitchen, sleeping and sanitation facilities, and a comprehensive library. It was installed as an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and unveiled on October 12th 1961.

The structure was built by the Martin Marietta Corporation and was 41 feet long, 15 feet high and weighed 5 1/2 tons and was an aluminium cylinder as big as a four room house. It was the central feature of the museum's Man in Space exhibit. It featured the prototype of the Whirlpool Space Kitchen which subsequently toured America. The kitchen was equipped with an oven, refrigerator, freezer, and food dispensers. The astronauts had a laboratory for conducting experiments on animals and a library with more than four million pages of reading material from comics to classics, compressed into a 90 pound microfilm unit.

The ARIES space laboratory was loosely based on the Manned Orbiting Laboratory framework which was being built by the USAF for orbital surveillance in the early 1960s. The Whirlpool kitchen was later adapted for use in the motion picture 2001 A Space Odyssey.