Honduras Lunar Sample Displays
The Honduras lunar sample displays are two commemorative plaques consisting of small fragments of Moon specimen brought back with the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 lunar missions and given in the 1970s to the people of Honduras by United States President Richard Nixon as goodwill gifts. Description Apollo 11 Apollo 17 History The Honduras Apollo 17 "goodwill Moon rocks" plaque display came into the possession of retired colonel Roberto Agurcia Ugarte; it is unclear how Ugarte obtained it. Ugarte put the plaque up for sale, covering the stars of the Honduras flag to conceal the plaque's origin. Alan Rosen, a Florida fruit distributor, purchased it from Ugarte for what he claims was $50,000 in 1996. In 1998 Rosen attempted to sell the rock and was caught in a sting operation, Operation Lunar Eclipse; U.S. Government agents recovered the rock. A lawsuit filed against Rosen, ''United States v. One Lucite Ball Containing Lunar Material (One Moon Rock) and One Ten Inch by F ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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NASA Photo Honduras Apollo 17 Plaque
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to give the U.S. space development effort a distinctly civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. NASA has since led most American space exploration, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968-1972 Apollo program, Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. NASA supports the International Space Station and oversees the development of the Orion (spacecraft), Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the crewed lunar Artemis program, Commercial Crew Program, Commercial Crew spacecraft, and the planned Lunar Gateway space station. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program, which provides o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Commemorative Plaque
A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, or in other places referred to as a historical marker, historic marker, or historic plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, typically attached to a wall, stone, or other vertical surface, and bearing text or an image in relief, or both, to commemorate one or more persons, an event, a former use of the place, or some other thing. Many modern plaques and markers are used to associate the location where the plaque or marker is installed with the person, event, or item commemorated as a place worthy of visit. A monumental plaque or tablet commemorating a deceased person or persons, can be a simple form of church monument. Most modern plaques affixed in this way are commemorative of something, but this is not always the case, and there are purely religious plaques, or those signifying ownership or affiliation of some sort. A plaquette is a small plaque, but in English, unlike many European languages, the term is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Moon Rock
Moon rock or lunar rock is rock originating from Earth's Moon. This includes lunar material collected during the course of human exploration of the Moon, and rock that has been ejected naturally from the Moon's surface and landed on Earth as meteorites. Sources Moon rocks on Earth come from four sources: those collected by six United States Apollo program crewed lunar landings from 1969 to 1972; those collected by three Soviet uncrewed Luna probes in the 1970s; those collected by the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program's uncrewed probes; and rocks that were ejected naturally from the lunar surface before falling to Earth as lunar meteorites. Apollo program Six Apollo missions collected 2,200 samples of material weighing , processed into more than 110,000 individually cataloged samples. Luna program Three Luna spacecraft returned with of samples. The Soviet Union abandoned its attempts at a crewed lunar program in the 1970s, but succeeded in landing three robotic Luna s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Apollo 11
Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module ''Eagle'' on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, and Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon's surface six hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21 at 02:56 UTC. Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later, and they spent about two and a quarter hours together exploring the site they had named Tranquility Base upon landing. Armstrong and Aldrin collected of lunar material to bring back to Earth as pilot Michael Collins flew the Command Module ''Columbia'' in lunar orbit, and were on the Moon's surface for 21 hours, 36 minutes before lifting off to rejoin ''Columbia''. Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16 at 13:32 UTC, and it was the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program. The Apollo spacecraft had three ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Apollo 17
Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon, while Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans (astronaut), Ronald Evans orbited above. Schmitt was the only professional geologist to land on the Moon; he was selected in place of Joe Engle, as NASA had been under pressure to send a scientist to the Moon. The mission's heavy emphasis on science meant the inclusion of a number of new experiments, including a Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, and Phooey, biological experiment containing five mice that was carried in the command module. Mission planners had two primary goals in deciding on the landing site: to sample Lunar highlands, lunar highland material older than that at Mare Imbrium and to investigate the possibility of relatively recent Volcano, volcanic activity. They therefore selected Taurus– ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, and to the north by the Gulf of Honduras, a large inlet of the Caribbean Sea. Its capital and largest city is Tegucigalpa. Honduras was home to several important Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya, before the Spanish Colonization in the sixteenth century. The Spanish introduced Catholicism and the now predominant Spanish language, along with numerous customs that have blended with the indigenous culture. Honduras became independent in 1821 and has since been a republic, although it has consistently endured much social strife and political instability, and remains one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. In 1960, the northern part of what was the Mosquito Coast was transferred from Nicara ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His five years in the White House saw reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the first manned Moon landings, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early, when he became the only president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal. Nixon was born into a poor family of Quakers in a small town in Southern California. He graduated from Duke Law School in 1937, practiced law in California, then moved with his wife Pat to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal government. After active duty ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Apollo 11 Lunar Sample Display
The Apollo 11 lunar sample display is a commemorative podium style plaque display consisting of four dust particle specimens (dubbed "Moon rocks"), the recipient's flag and two small metal plates attached with descriptive messages. The Apollo 11 plaques were given as gifts in 1970 by President Richard Nixon to 135 countries, the 50 states of the United States and its territories, and the United Nations. History and description With the exception of Venezuela, whose actual flag was not flown to the Moon on Apollo 11, the wording on the plaque (with the appropriate name filled in) was: Fate The ''New York Times'' reported in 2012 that gifts of moon rocks were not well tracked or managed by NASA. Within the US, public gifts require legislation to be transferred, but other nations set their own laws. Some samples of lunar dust soil from the Apollo 11 and lunar basalt 70017 from the later Apollo 17 missions have been reported missing. Since 2005 entities and people have mad ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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CollectSPACE
collectSPACE is an online publication and community for space history enthusiasts featuring articles and photos about space artifacts and memorabilia, information on past, current, and upcoming space events, space history collecting resources, and links to other space-related websites. It also provides an array of message boards where registered members can discuss various aspects of space history and the space collecting hobby; buy, sell, or trade items; or pose "what if?" historical questions. Users often abbreviate the website's name as "cS," and members often refer to each other as "cSers." collectSPACE, founded and edited by Robert Pearlman, has published articles and reviews by authors Andrew Chaikin (''A Man on the Moon''), Kris Stoever (''For Spacious Skies''), James Oberg (''Red Star in Orbit''), Frederick Ordway III (''Imagining Space''), Francis French ('' In the Shadow of the Moon''), David Hitt (''Homesteading Space''), Russell Still (''Relics of the Space Race''), C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ricardo Maduro
Ricardo Rodolfo Maduro Joest (born 20 April 1946 in Panama) is a Honduran politician who served as President of Honduras from 2002 to 2006. A member of the National Party, Maduro was previously chairman of the Central Bank of Honduras. He graduated from The Lawrenceville School (where he was awarded the Lawrenceville Medal, Lawrenceville's highest award to alumni) and later Stanford University. Maduro is a member of the Levy-Maduro family whose roots go through Portugal, the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles. Life and career Maduro's first marriage to Miriam Andréu produced three daughters and a son, Ricardo Ernesto, who was kidnapped at age 25 on 23 April 1997. Ricardo Ernesto's body was discovered two days later. His death inspired Maduro to aspire to the presidency and gave him the popularity that allowed him to first register and then be elected as a presidential candidate, in spite of a constitutional ban on those not born in Honduras from becoming President. This ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tegucigalpa
Tegucigalpa (, , ), formally Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District ( es, Tegucigalpa, Municipio del Distrito Central or ''Tegucigalpa, M.D.C.''), and colloquially referred to as ''Tegus'' or ''Teguz'', is the capital and largest city of Honduras along with its sister city, Comayagüela. Claimed on 29 September 1578 by the Spaniards, Tegucigalpa became the country's capital on October 30, 1880, under President Marco Aurelio Soto, when he moved the capital from Comayagua. The Constitution of Honduras, enacted in 1982, names the sister cities of Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela as a Central District to serve as the permanent national capital, under articles 8 and 295. After the dissolution of the Federal Republic of Central America in 1841, Honduras became an individual sovereign nation with Comayagua as its capital. The capital was moved to Tegucigalpa in 1880. On January 30, 1937, Article 179 of the 1936 Honduran Constitution was changed under Decree 53 to establish Te ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Pearlman
Robert Zane Pearlman (born January 14, 1976) is an American space historian and the founder and editor of collectSPACE, a website devoted to news and information concerning space exploration and space-related artifacts and memorabilia, especially in popular culture. He is also a contributing writer to Space.com. Biography Pearlman was born in Livingston, New Jersey but considers West Orange, New Jersey his hometown. He attended the University of Maryland, College Park from 1994 to 1997 studying astronomy, physics and English. In 1996, he developed the website promoting Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin's first novel. From 1997 to 2003, Pearlman served as first the director of communications and later marketing director for Space Adventures, the first company to book privately financed spaceflight participants on flights to the International Space Station. He was communities producer for Space.com from 2000 to 2001. From 1998 to 2003, he was the on-air host for National Space Da ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |