Notable space themed events hosted by the museum include a series of special planetarium shows and astronomy outreach events for the 2009 International Year of Astronomy, observations of the 2012 Transit of Venus, the 2017 North American Solar Eclipse, and a 2018 world record astronomy observation. From 16–24 July, 2019, the museum displayed exhibits celebrating the semicentennial of Apollo 11; on 20 July, it hosted an event which featured a real-time rebroadcast of the mission, showings of contemporary documentaries from 1969, model rocket construction and launching, spaceflight simulations, planetarium shows focused on the Moon and both past and future human lunar exploration, as well as lunar regolith and rock samples from various Apollo missions obtained by the museum for temporary display by NASA as part of a public science outreach initiative by the agency in observation of the event.