From 11 May to 12 June, the Exhibition Space of Palazzo Rota Pisaroni hosts, in Piacenza, the exhibition From the Earth to the Moon and beyond, with dozens of objects, documents and memorabilia that reconstruct the fascinating epic of the conquest of space, taking stock on more than sixty years of missions to discover space.
The exhibition, organized by the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation in collaboration with NASA, the Amateur Astronomers Group, the Daedalus association and with the sponsorship of the Municipality of Piacenza, offers a journey through history and science through exhibits and films: from specimens from overalls (faithful replicas of those supplied with the Apollo, Mercury and Shuttle missions) to the original technical equipment, from flight documents to space station models, arriving at the food rations used in the various missions. Among the exhibits on display, there is also an authentic fragment of lunar soil, collected by the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
From the Earth to the Moon and beyond presents various thematic sections, including one dedicated to so-called space memorabilia: flight manuals, parts of spacecraft, objects brought on board during various missions. Models of different vehicles will also be on display, such as that of the International Space Station, the Apollo program rocket, the Space Shuttle and others. And since the history of space is made above all of men, the exhibition pays homage to scientists, dreamers and forerunners: in short, to all the figures who, with their discoveries and ideas, laid the foundations that allowed the conquests and development of modern technology. Among the best known are Jurij Gagarin and John Glenn, the first two men in orbit around the Earth, protagonists of the remote challenge between the USA and the USSR for the conquest of space.
There is also a special section dedicated to the moon landing and its background, to the successes and failures of the Apollo program and the best known space missions; but also to the secrets of the International Space Station, our "outpost in space": its construction, its purposes and curiosities about everyday life on board, as well as the discoveries and results achieved in its over fifteen years of service, documented in the appropriate video section from contributions from spectacular contributions made by the astronauts themselves.
Among the most fascinating exhibits a sample of moonstone weighing about 160 grams: it is one of the largest specimens among those made available by NASA for exhibitions and events, which arrived on Earth at the end of the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, the eighth in the manned program and the third to land. To deepen their knowledge of lunar rock, all visitors to the exhibition will receive a free ticket to enter the Natural History Museum of Piacenza, with a rich mineralogical section.
The exhibition also presents a vast program of side events and meetings.
Expected in Piacenza, among others, the astronaut Maurizio Cheli - the first Italian to have the role of mission specialist during the STS-75 space mission of the Space Shuttle Program - and the journalist Paolo Attivissimo, committed to rigorously and scientifically denying the theses that question the actual landing of man on the moon; one of the most evocative appointments is the one with the Amateur Astronomers Group of Piacenza, which on Saturday 14 May offers – from 21.15 to 23.00 in piazza Sant'Antonino – the viewing via telescope of the magnified lunar details and the equatorial bands of the planet Jupiter, together with the so-called dance of its Medici satellites, discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610.
