In this photo taken Feb. 17, 2017, the Apollo 11 capsule sits in the restoration hanger at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, ahead of a planned four-city tour.

(AP Photo/Jessica Gresko)

The Apollo 11 command module, which traveled more than 950,000 miles to take three Americans to the moon and back in 1969, will take its first tour of the United States in more than 40 years.

The famed carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon nearly 50 years ago, and to celebrate the achievement, the is loaning the space capsule to four different museums around the country, the Associated Press reported.

The capsule has not left the Smithsonian since the museum opened in 1976. Before that, it made a 50-state tour in 1970 and 1971. The museum said it will use the time the capsule is away to renovate the gallery that honors the historic flight. Upon its return, Columbia will be the centerpiece of the new that is scheduled to open in 2021.

Along with the space capsule, other artifacts will make the tour, including the helmet and gloves that Aldrin wore during his moonwalk, a "rock box" that the astronauts used to bring back some of the first moon rocks and a watch that Collins wore while orbiting the moonas Aldrin and Armstrong explored the lunar surface.

"This is the spacecraft that brought the three astronauts home from the first landing on the moon, so it's one of the Smithsonian's most important artifacts," Michael Neufeld, a senior curator at the museum, .

The capsule will begin its tour in Houston in October and spend about five months at each site, ending in Seattle for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing on July 20, 2019. The capsule also will visit the Space Center Houston from Oct. 14, 2017 to March 18, 2018; the Saint Louis Science Center from April 14 to Sept. 3, 2018; the Sen. John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh from Sept. 29, 2018, to Feb. 18, 2019 and the Museum of Flight in Seattle from March 16 to Sept. 2, 2019.

The museums chosen to display the command module had to meet strict criteria.

"All of the venues actually had to submit engineering documentation to make sure that the floor load was one that could support not just the Columbia, but also the rest of the traveling exhibit," Kathrin Halpern, a project director at the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, told NPR. "It's a very special artifact. And it does weigh a lot. The command module, on its traveling ring, is over 13,600 pounds."