Lunar samples, collected by China’s Chang’e 5 Lander, are now on display, through Sunday, on the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) booth at the NARIT Fair, being held at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre.
The booth is open today from 4pm until 8pm, but it will open from 9am to 8pm for the six remaining days. Entry is free of charge and no advance bookings are required.
The moon dust and rock samples arrived in Bangkok on Sunday from the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Centre in Beijing. They have already been exhibited in Beijing, Nanjing, Hainan and Hong Kong, before going on public display in Bangkok, the first place outside China.
According to Wikipedia, Chang’e 5 was the 5th lunar exploration mission in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program and China’s first lunar sample-return mission. It was launched on November 23rd, 2020, from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island and landed on the Moon in December 2020.
The lander collected 61.1 ounces of lunar material from the near side of the Moon, including a sample taken at a depth of about one metre, and returned to Earth on December 16th. Chang’e 5 was the first lunar sample-return mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
