Ask a Trekkie “What happened to the Enterprise?” and they’re likely to tell you it was destroyed by Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

From a Star Trek canon perspective, they’d be right. From a real-world perspective, though, they’d probably be missing the point.

There is a model of the USS Enterprise from the original 1966-69 television series that survives to this day. It has just undergone a major restoration and rebuild, thanks to The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The 11-foot model appeared during the second season of the original Star Trek series, in the memorable The Trouble with Tribbles episode. It joined the museum’s collection in 1974.