Out of This World Space Exhibition

Amazing rare space artefacts including gloves from Russian Orlan space suit glove warn by cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin to conduct repairs to the Mir space station after it’s near fatal collision, NASA original documents, a piece of netting from the Apollo 13 lunar module aft stowage assembly along with models, badges, videos and photographs were all on display at the Old Fire Station gallery over last weekend.

The collection was made up mostly of items that were owned by local resident Michael Warner who organised the 50th anniversary Moon Landing event in July in Market Place.  He has collected the rare items over the last 6 years.

Michael said, “I thought it would be a good year to bring this collection together along with some items given by my friend Mark Yates.  The gallery is the right size and worked beautifully to show off the collection.  I believe this is one of is the largest declared collection in the UK (most items are obviously in the US).”

Does Michael have a favourite item?  He commented, “My favourite is the Apollo 17 Rock Manifest which was written on the moon to log all of the weights and locations of the moon rocks (it was a geological and scientific mission) and because it is impregnated with lunar dust!”

Steven from Henley who was visiting the exhibition said, “I think what is fascinating is the detail given it was the late 1960s and there was no computers, it was a lot of handwritten stuff.  It’s fascinating that they had to follow all this paper instructions.  Particularly interested by the Apollo 13 materials and artefacts because that was the famous mission.”