page_title: Nebraska lunar sample displays
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Nebraska lunar sample displays / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Nebraska Governor's Mansion, located between 14th Street and Goodhue Boulevard, and between G and H Streets in Lincoln, Nebraska; seen from the northwest. The gate at left leads onto H Street.
context_page_description: The Nebraska 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 Nebraska by United States President Richard Nixon as goodwill gifts.
context_section_description: Shortly after the goodwill Moon rock displays were given to the state of Nebraska in the 1970s by President Nixon, they were stored at the Nebraska governor's mansion and completely forgotten about. Nobody knew where the plaque displays were. They were rediscovered in 1997 when Dianne Nelson, wife of then-governor of Nebraska Ben Nelson, got involved in a project to renovate the governor's mansion to its original condition. Dianne found the Nebraska Apollo displays while the mansion was undergoing renovations and didn't know exactly what they were. As far as she was concerned, they were just wooden displays with labels on them about Apollo missions which had been securely put away and forgotten about. The 2012 curator of the Ralph Mueller Planetarium, who has been at the Planetarium for over 40 years, confirmed that the specimens were misplaced and nobody knew where they were for many years. When Dianne came across the Apollo Moon rock displays in the process of renovation, she gave them to the Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Historical Society, whose mission is to "educate people about Nebraska's past through historic artifacts and historic places", decided that the "Moon rocks" should be displayed in a natural history setting. The Society then gave the Apollo displays to the Ralph Mueller Planetarium of the University of Nebraska State Museum, whose mission is outer space education through planetarium teaching. The curator of the Planetarium said they had remodeled an old exhibit that is just outside the Planetarium lobby to present the Apollo lunar displays to the public.
caption: Nebraska governor's mansion
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