Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 21 in Pennabilli Square will resonate the “bip” of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite launched exactly 50 years ago. The exhibition “50 years of space” will be inaugurated, set up by the Mateureka Museum to retrace the fundamental stages of space conquest: from the first missions to the landing of man on the Moon, from the International Space Station to the robots on Mars, to finish with previews on the journeys of the future.
It starts from historical documentation to reach the natural-size reconstruction of Sputnik and a rocket used in 1958 during the international geophysical year.
The scale models of Apollo 5, Lem, Shuttle and the Soviet space station Mir are also visible.
One section is dedicated to the conquest of the Moon, which took place 38 years ago; another to astronomy with numerous scientific instruments and the possibility to observe two fragments of meteorites fallen in China.
An exclusive attraction is the possibility to observe the surface of Mars in three dimensions, with special glasses, taken from the Pathfinder probe.
Special attention is paid to the importance of space today and the next goals to be achieved. Closes the exhibition a rich review of scientific films and documentaries on space. In this regard, the museum’s media library has over a thousand computer software covering astronauts and astronomy, the complete space series published by Nasa and American Mpc Research and over 30 hours of recordings and sounds from space.
The exhibition curator Renzo Baldoni, director of Mateureka, hopes that this represents a testimony of how the dreams of the children of yesterday have become the technological reality of our today and the basis for the future of humanity and hopes that the spring at the base of this incredible journey that man, challenging the laws of nature, has embarked on towards the conquest of space, that is, curiosity and desire to know, can push the boys to see today.