Hutchinson ? Patricia Brooks Carey, who founded the planetarium that grew into a space museum housing the Apollo 13 and Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft, died Wednesday at Hutchinson Hospital. She was 81.

Carey launched the space museum in 1962 as a small planetarium in the poultry house on the Kansas State Fairgrounds.

After moving to the science building at Hutchinson Community College in the mid-1960s, the planetarium grew from a two-person operation into a space museum attracting about 285,000 visitors each year and employing about 70 people.

The museum features the multistory IMAX Dome Theater, the Hall of Space Museum and such educational programs as the Future Astronaut Training Program. The museum also is home to one of the most significant collections of American and Russian space artifacts in the world.

Carey and the Cosmosphere’s achievements were honored in June with the unveiling of a 7-by-14 foot mural in the lobby of the museum’s IMAX Dome Theater.

To the extreme right stands a chicken, because of the Hutchinson Planetarium’s start in the poultry house. Also featured are some of the space artifacts that the museum acquired and restored through the years.

Funeral arrangements are pending.