Netherlands lunar sample displays

The Netherlands lunar sample displays are two commemorative plaques consisting of small fragments of Moon specimens brought back with the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 Moon missions and given to the people of the Netherlands by President Richard Nixon as goodwill gifts.

Description

Apollo 11

At the request of Nixon, NASA had about 250 presentation plaques made following Apollo 11 in 1969. Each included about four rice-sized particles of Moon dust from the mission totaling about 50 mg.^[1]^[2] The Apollo 11 lunar sample display has an acrylic plastic button containing the Moon dust mounted with the recipient's country or state flag that had been to the Moon and back. All 135 countries received the display, as did the 50 states of the United States and the U.S. provinces and the United Nations.^[1]

The plaques were given as gifts by Nixon in 1970.^[1]

Apollo 17

The sample Moon rock collected during the Apollo 17 mission was later named lunar basalt 70017, and dubbed the Goodwill rock.^[3] Pieces of the rock weighing about 1.14 grams^[2] were placed inside a piece of acrylic lucite, and mounted along with a flag from the country that had flown on Apollo 17 it would be distributed to.^[3]

In 1973 Nixon had the plaques sent to 135 countries, and to the United States with its territories, as a goodwill gesture.^[3]

History

According to Moon rock researcher Robert Pearlman, both the Netherlands Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 lunar sample displays are in the National Museum of the History of Science and Medicine in Leiden, Netherlands.^[1]^[3]^[4]

The Rijksmuseum of the Netherlands said in 1992 that it received a so called "moon rock" from the estate of Netherlands Prime Minister Willem Drees.^[4]^[5]^[6] As it turned out the prime minister had misidentified and marked the object as a moon rock after he received it from an American diplomat. The American diplomat was from Arizona and he wanted to give the prime minister a piece of Arizona as a gift. The museum then made a second error when it put the object on display and identified it as a moon rock without verifying its authenticity first. When it was subsequently examined years later it was found to be just a piece of petrified wood. It's important to note that NASA, the US space agency, was not the source of the rock, they never had the rock in their possession and they didn't give the rock to the prime minister as is often falsely claimed. Unfortunately, many moon landing deniers often mention the petrified wood story in an attempt to prove that the Apollo moon landings were fake.