Half a century after U.S. astronauts brought it back from the moon’s surface, a minute piece of extraterrestrial rock has finally reached its intended destination, the east Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus.
A spectator looks at a tiny piece of moon rock encased in a plastic globe, on display at the an exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the last of the U.S. manned missions to the moon and the Artemis spacecraft now orbiting the moon, in Nicosia, Cyprus, Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022. A half century after U.S. astronauts brought it back from the moon's surface, this tiny piece of cosmic rock has finally reached its intended destination, the east Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus.
The lunar sample is encased in a plastic globe with an attached plaque underneath a small flag of Cyprus that reads: “This fragment is a portion of a rock from the Taurus Littrow valley of the Moon. It is given as a symbol of the unity of human endeavor and carries with it the hope of the American people for a world at peace.”
It was one of 270 such lunar samples brought back from moon missions in 1969 and 1972 that the Nixon administration gave as gifts to foreign countries. It was eventually returned to NASA in the U.S. and locked up in a vault. It finally made its return to Cyprus through the efforts of Danos and will be officially handed over to the Cypriot people during a Dec. 16 ceremony at the presidential palace.
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