The Ohio hometown of legendary astronaut John Glenn has an interest in acquiring the Saturn 1B rocket that is destined to be removed from a north Alabama interstate welcome center.

The village of New Concord, Ohio, village administrator Rick Giroux described its interest Wednesday as “exploratory” in an email to AL.com. The village envisions the rocket being on display at the John & Annie Glenn Museum in New Concord, Giroux said.

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NASA and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center announced last week that the rocket, deteriorating beyond repair after standing for more than 40 years at the Interstate 65 welcome center just south of the Tennessee state line, would be taken down for safety reasons. In a statement released Friday night, the space agency and rocket center estimated repairs would cost about $7 million with no certainty the rocket could withstand a refurbishment.

Upon seeing headlines of the rocket’s imminent demise, Giroux began inquiring if the rocket might be available for display in the tiny eastern Ohio town where Glenn grew up more than 500 miles away.

“It would definitely be a tourist draw,” Giroux said.

NASA selected Glenn in its first class of seven astronauts and in 1962 he became the first American to orbit the earth – becoming a national hero amid the Space Race with the Soviet Union. A week after his almost five-hour mission to circle the earth three times, Glenn and his wife were celebrated in a New York ticker-tape parade with an estimated 4 million people in attendance.

Glenn went on to serve 25 years in the U.S. Senate. He returned to space flight in 1998 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, becoming at the time the oldest person to fly in space at age 77.

Glenn died in 2016. Annie Glenn, a renowned advocate for those with communication disorders, died in 2020 at the age of 100 due to complications from COVID-19. Annie Glenn received the first national award of the American Speech and Hearing Association for “providing an inspiring model for people with communicative disorders,” according to the museum website.

The museum is in the home of Glenn and his wife. Its mission statement: “It is our mission to teach twentieth century American history through the prism of the Glenns’ lives.”

Giroux said the village, which has a population of just 2,400, is “keenly interested” in obtaining a full-size replica or an authentic Mercury capsule for display at the museum similar to the spacecraft Glenn flew on his historic journey.

But the Saturn 1B rocket also attracted Giroux’s attention. And while his initial research gave him “sticker shock,” he said, at the possible cost of relocating the rocket to Ohio, the village had interest in at least the capsule portion of the 168-foot-tall rocket. The NASA statement last week said the rocket, which is 22 feet in diameter, is too large to be moved because of interstate overpasses and other obstacles.

The rocket is owned by NASA and was on loan via the rocket center to the Alabama Department of Transportation for display at the welcome center. NASA has not made any announcement concerning a timeline for taking down the rocket. The welcome center is closed for renovation.