Explore 300,000 historic objects from the Science Museum Group Collection in our innovative collection management facility at the National Collections Centre.
Walk among hundreds of large objects—including a Spacelab 2 X-ray telescope carried into orbit by the US Space Shuttle Challenger and an iconic Glasgow Tramcar—on a colourful floor grid, explore the aisles of over 30,000 metres of shelving containing objects from Stephen Hawking’s office, and even a toy duck that helped a spacecraft land on a comet.
National Collections Centre
The National Collections Centre cares for hundreds of thousands of objects in the Science Museum Group Collection.
In 2018, we embarked on an ambitious project to create a new purpose-built facility to transform our care for the collection and enable people to explore much more of it than ever before.
Around 300,000 historic objects have now been carefully moved to this sector-leading facility, bringing together these historic objects under one roof for the first time for conservation, study and public access.
Regular public tours of this building began in late 2024, allowing members of the public to get up close to our world-class collection of objects from science, technology, engineering, medicine, transport and media.
Caring for the collection
The world-class Science Museum Group Collection forms an enduring record of scientific, technological and medical advancement from across the globe.
At the National Collections Centre, we care for, conserve and research our unique collection; we prepare objects for display in our five national museums or for loans to other UK and international institutions.
Our new purpose-built collection management facility provides a high performance, sustainable home for the collection. It maintains the stable environmental conditions essential for the long-term preservation of our objects and will allow us to revolutionise public access to the Science Museum Group Collection.
At 90m wide and 300m long, the facility is equivalent in size to 600 double-decker buses. It features conservation laboratories, research areas and photography studios alongside a vast storage hall with 30,000 metres of shelving to house the collection.
The Collection
The Science Museum Group cares for an unparalleled collection of over seven million items related to science, technology, engineering and medicine.
Our collection traces its origin back to the 1851 Great Exhibition. Among the 7.3 million items we now care for there are:
- 140,000 medical items, including the long-term loan of the Wellcome Collection
- 38,000 items relating to railway locomotives, technology and railway life
- 26,000 scientific instruments
- 17,000 items of photographic, cinematographic and televisual technology
- 7,000 artworks
The Science Museum Group has undertaken an ambitious project to transform how we care for and share our collection.
This incredible collection is astonishing, beautiful and world-renowned. Standout items from our collection include: Alan Turing’s Pilot ACE computer; one of the first models used to represent atoms; Charles Babbage’s drawings and models; Dorothy Hodgkin’s model of penicillin; Helen Sharman’s spacesuit and Tim Peake’s spacecraft; Amy Johnson’s Gipsy Moth aircraft; famous locomotives from Stephenson’s Rocket and Sans Pareil to Mallard and Flying Scotsman and the world’s earliest surviving photographic negative.
Related Content
- Related links
- Online collection
Revealing the Science Museum Group Collection
A Brief History of Stuff podcast
Managing our collection
Caring for the collection
National Collections Centre
Object loans
Donate an object
Ask about our collection - In this page
Accessing the Collection online
You can discover over 380,000 of our remarkable objects, photographs and archive materials on our collection website.
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