The Vietnam National Space Centre (VNSC) has received several objects from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for exhibition at the country’s space museum.

The objects consist of a Vietnamese flag and a video of greetings of Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai from the International Space Station (ISS), an ISS model, a model of the Japanese experiment module KIBO on the ISS, and a model of the H-IIA launch rocket.

This activity was under the agreement signed between JAXA and VNSC in November 2017 to develop the Vietnam Space Museum. Accordingly, JAXA pledged to provide some objects for display at the museum, such as space technology models, some items from the ISS, and images or films about outer space. It will also help with the management of the museum’s activities.

At the handover ceremony in Tokyo, VNSC General Director Pham Anh Tuan thanked JAXA for cooperating with his centre in not only space technology, but also the popularisation of space knowledge amongst Vietnamese people.

He noted that the planetarium and observatory of the Vietnam space centre project, which includes the space museum, in Hanoi’s Hoa Lac Hi-tech Park will be open to the public in the second quarter of this year. The objects received from JAXA will also be showcased here.

On January 18, JAXA launched MicroDragon, a Vietnamese-made earth observation satellite, along with six Japanese satellites into space. The launch, using an Epsilon-4 rocket, was carried out at the Uchinoura Space Centre in Kagoshima prefecture, some 1,000km outside of Tokyo. –VNA