Hutchinson ? The public will be able to watch as the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center restores two space capsules from the Gemini program of the 1960s.

The Gemini 10 capsule, flown by astronauts John Young and Michael Collins in 1966, has been at the space museum for the past year after being on display in Norway for more than a decade.

The Gemini 6 capsule, flown in 1965 by Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford, will arrive Thursday from the St. Louis Science Center.

“It’s pretty exciting,” said Jim Remar, director of collections, exhibits and buildings at the Cosmosphere. “Very few organizations are able to have two flown Gemini spacecraft on display at the same time.”

Restoration crews also will replace some hardware that was removed when the capsules went on display.

“Both of them are in fairly good shape,” Remar said. “We’ll do a thorough cleaning to get the years of dust out. There’s some minor corrosion on the bottom to deal with.”

After restoration, the Gemini 10 capsule will remain on long-term display at the Cosmosphere. The Gemini 6 capsule will be shipped to the Oklahoma State Museum of History in Oklahoma City, where it will remain on long-term display.

In exchange for Gemini 6, the St. Louis Science Center will get the Cosmosphere’s Gemini 3A space capsule, a backup spacecraft that NASA used to run systems checks before launch. That capsule will remain in St. Louis indefinitely.

The restoration can be monitored on the Cosmosphere’s Web site, www.cosmo.org