Kickstarter campaign starts to save Neil Armstrong's spacesuit

The Smithsonian Institution launched a Kickstarter campaign Monday to raise money to save Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum hopes to raise $500,000 to preserve the suit "down to the particles of lunar dust that cling to its surface," a statement on the campaign website said. Armstrong wore the suit 46 years ago when he walked on the moon for the first time on July 20, 1969.

Apollo spacesuits -- including Armstrong's -- are very fragile and are currently stored in a climate-controlled collections area not open to the public, according to the Smithsonian. Preserving and restoring Armstrong's suit for public display will be a time-consuming process that involves digitizing the suit so the public can learn more about how it functioned.

The Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s captivated the world.

Astronauts Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins left Earth July 16, 1969, from Cape Kennedy in Florida.

Armstrong and Aldrin stepped onto the moon on July 20 and Armstrong said the now-famous line: "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

More than a half billion people watched the televised event. (Armstrong later said he intended to say "one small step for a man" and may have, but the "a" was dropped in audio recordings. The matter has remained a subject of debate among Apollo enthusiasts.)

The men spent 21 hours and 36 minutes on the moon before joining back up with Collins in the command module and returning safely home. The mission accomplished the objective set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, which was to land a man on the moon and then return to Earth.

This is the first time the Smithsonian has partnered with the crowd-sourced fundraising company Kickstarter, but the federally-funded museum said it plans to launch a series of similar initiatives in the coming year.

"The focus will be on artifacts, exhibitions and projects that need funding, giving the public a variety of opportunities to support the Smithsonian based on their own interests," the museum said in a statement.

If the campaign raises enough money, the museum plans to have Armstrong's spacesuit restored by July 2019 in time for the 50th anniversary of the moonwalk.

Contributing: Anne Ryman, The Arizona Republic; The Associated Press