Space art, a glowing orb and moon rock

An exhibition opening in Nelson today features one of earth's rarest objects.

Our Moon: Then, Now & Beyond includes a piece of moon rock on loan from Te Papa, which was given to New Zealand for helping to get the 1969 Apollo 11 mission off the ground.

The exhibition was one of few created by the Nelson Provincial Museum that would tour to other centres.

Chief executive Lucinda Blackley-Jimson said it was important for that reason, and others.

"There's a huge amount of interest from other museums. It's something very special as we've imported an amazing art work by UK artist Luke Jerram."

Blackley-Jimson said the glowing, four-metre orb wrapped in high-definition NASA lunar surface imagery was the centrepiece of the Nelson exhibition.

A museum fact sheet said that the 12 people who walked on the moon in the three years after the 1969 mission came back to earth with nearly 400 kilograms of lunar rocks and soil.

Alongside the moon rock, the exhibition will also feature a replica of the coin carried on the Apollo mission, which carried goodwill messages. The original was planted on the Moon.

Visitors will be able to "take a whiff of the moon" at a scent station, and weigh themselves on a set of adjusted scales that will record their weight as if they were on the moon.

There was also an associated programme of community-wide events, from "lunar flow yoga", torch-lit storytelling, and an array of musical events, workshops and public talks.

Blackley-Jimson hoped the exhibition would resonate with young people.

"And the fact we've now got such a strong New Zealand connection with the work of Rocket Lab, which is sending rockets out into space, and it's becoming a really viable career path for young people."

The exhibition was presented in partnership with the Rātā Foundation, Nelson's science research institute The Cawthron, and the US Embassy.

Lunar fast facts:

• The Moon is slowly moving away from the Earth, about 4cm further away each year.
• More than 50 spacecraft have successfully launched from Earth to fly past, orbit, or land on the Moon.
• The time it takes to get to the Moon depends on the trajectory and propulsion system of the spacecraft. Apollo missions took about three days.
• The distance from Earth is not always the same - it varies because the lunar orbit is not circular, but elliptical.
• It takes an average 1.27 seconds for a radio signal to travel from Moon to Earth.
• Lunar dust was made of sharp, abrasive particles, but it was not known how toxic it was for humans.
• There was scientific evidence for water on the Moon.
• The Moon has a very thin atmosphere called an exosphere. In the cold lunar night the exosphere falls to the ground. Elements in the lunar atmosphere include helium, argon, sodium and potassium.