About Hong Kong Space Museum

Hong Kong Space Museum

The Hong Kong Space Museum (香港太空館) is a public astronomy and space science museum at 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD). Its hemispherical planetarium dome — affectionately nicknamed the Pineapple Bun by Hong Kong people for its grid-patterned exterior — is a famous landmark on the Tsim Sha Tsui harbourfront, beside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Opened on 8 October 1980, it was Hong Kong's first planetarium and contained the world's first computerised planetarium. It remains the only planetarium in Hong Kong.

An idea born in the Space Age

The idea of a planetarium was originally proposed by the Urban Council in 1961, in the first years of the Space Age, when the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and the beginning of human spaceflight had made astronomy a subject of intense public fascination worldwide. Ten years later, in 1971, the Urban Services Department set up a working group to study overseas experience in establishing planetariums; the study was aimed at laying the groundwork for the future Hong Kong Space Museum. The Hong Kong Government decided to build the museum at Tsim Sha Tsui, on the waterfront site it still occupies, and invited Joseph Liu to serve as Planetarium Advisor. In 1974 the Department signed a contract with the Carl Zeiss Company to purchase a planetarium projector and other equipment at a price of HK$3,050,000. The museum's first curator, Dr Charles F. Hagar, guided its early development, and the building was designed under Li Minggen, then Director of the Architectural Services Department.

Construction and opening in 1980

Construction commenced in 1977 and the museum opened on 8 October 1980. At its opening it contained the world's first computerised planetarium — the first planetarium anywhere to possess a fully automatic, computer-controlled system at its theatre — a distinction that placed Hong Kong at the forefront of planetarium technology. The museum covers more than 8,000 square metres. It is divided into two wings. The east wing is the nucleus of the planetarium, with its egg-shaped dome structure; beneath it are the Stanley Ho Space Theatre, exhibition halls, workshops and offices. The west wing houses a lecture hall, a gift shop and offices, and originally the Hall of Astronomy. Its waterfront position, at the tip of the Tsim Sha Tsui cultural complex, made the egg-shaped dome an instant and enduring landmark of Victoria Harbour, visible across the water from Hong Kong Island.

The Stanley Ho Space Theatre

Beneath the dome sits the museum's planetarium theatre, named the Stanley Ho Space Theatre in honour of the philanthropist Stanley Ho. The theatre's hemispherical projection screen has a diameter of 23 metres. The original Zeiss star projector could simulate 8,000 stars, together with the Sun, the Moon and the five planets visible to the naked eye, projected onto the dome above the audience. The museum boasted the first OMNIMAX film projector in the eastern hemisphere, and for decades its programmes combined sky shows produced by the museum itself — it produced two multi-media planetarium shows each year — with the best foreign OMNIMAX and fulldome films introduced to Hong Kong. The theatre underwent a major upgrade completed in 2021, with a new nano-seam dome screen eliminating visible seams and a state-of-the-art digital projection system delivering high-resolution, including 8K and 3D fulldome, shows with surround sound. Shows are presented in multiple languages, making the theatre accessible to Hong Kong's diverse audience of residents, students and tourists.

From the Hall of Astronomy to the Hall of the Cosmos

The museum has two thematic exhibition halls, whose exhibits are predominantly interactive, enabling visitors to learn through entertaining and educational experiences. In their original form they were the Hall of Space Science in the east wing and the Hall of Astronomy in the west wing. In a major renovation, the exhibition halls closed on 5 October 2015 and reopened on 25 April 2018 as the Hall of the Cosmos, on the ground floor, and the Hall of Space Exploration, on the first floor, together housing about 100 exhibits, most of them interactive. The Hall of the Cosmos takes visitors on a journey from the near Earth and the Solar System to the far reaches of the universe — the Big Bang, stars, galaxies and black holes — with interactive exhibits such as Aurora, which recreates the polar lights, and Gravity Surfing, which lets visitors experience gravitational effects. The Hall of Space Exploration is dedicated to the history and technology of space travel, with models of spacecraft, interactive simulations and experiences evoking weightlessness and life aboard a space station, and a mock-up of the nose and cockpit section of the Space Shuttle orbiter that visitors can examine at close quarters.

Historic exhibits: meteorites, flags and a first taikonaut

Alongside its interactive displays, the museum holds a small but significant collection of historic space artefacts, as recorded in its own accounts. They include meteorites collected since 1981, in the museum's first years; an Indian astrolabe acquired in 1983, representing the pre-telescopic astronomy from which modern space science grew; a flag of Hong Kong flown inside Shenzhou 1, China's first unmanned Shenzhou spacecraft; the certificate naming Minor Planet 3297 Hong Kong, an asteroid named for the city; and the work uniform donated in 2017 by Yang Liwei, the first person sent into space by the Chinese space programme, who flew on Shenzhou 5 in 2003. Together these objects connect Hong Kong, in material form, to both the history of astronomy and the modern Chinese space programme — a connection the museum, as Hong Kong's space institution, is uniquely placed to present.

Programmes beyond the galleries

The museum organises a large number of extension activities each year, including the Astronomy Carnival, Astronomy Happy Hours, fun science laboratory sessions, astronomy competitions, lectures, film shows and stargazing activities, as well as special exhibitions and events such as talks by astronomers. Its website provides information on stargazing, basic astronomy, astronomical news and educational resources, serving amateur astronomers across Hong Kong, where light pollution makes guided observing especially valuable. School programmes introduce students to astronomy as part of science education, and the museum's planetarium shows are a fixture of Hong Kong school life. In the 2008–09 financial year, about 590,000 visits were made to the museum, a measure of its reach in a city of its size. A special exhibition marking the museum's 45th anniversary was presented in 2025, featuring historic photographs of the museum and its place in the development of Tsim Sha Tsui.

The Pineapple Bun on the harbourfront

The museum's building deserves attention in its own right. The planetarium's egg-shaped dome, covering the east wing, renders the 8,000-square-metre museum one of the most famous landmarks in Hong Kong. Its tiled, gridded surface led Hong Kong people to nickname it the Pineapple Bun, after the local pastry whose cracked sugary top the dome resembles — an affectionate name that signals how completely the building has been absorbed into the city's popular culture. The museum stands within the Tsim Sha Tsui cultural complex, alongside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Hong Kong Museum of Art and, across Salisbury Road, the Clock Tower and the harbour promenade, making its forecourt one of the most visited pieces of public space in Hong Kong.

Management and renewal under the LCSD

The museum was created under the Urban Council and its Urban Services Department; when the Urban Council was disbanded in 2000, management passed to the newly formed Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which manages Hong Kong's major museums. Under the LCSD the museum has undergone the two great renewals of its history: the 2015–2018 renovation of its exhibition halls into the Hall of the Cosmos and Hall of Space Exploration, and the 2021 upgrade of the Stanley Ho Space Theatre's dome screen and projection system. Admission to the exhibition halls is charged at a modest standard rate with concessions, while the Space Theatre shows are separately ticketed — a model unchanged in principle since the museum's early years.

Hong Kong's window on the universe

For more than four decades, the Hong Kong Space Museum has been Hong Kong's window on the universe: the city's only planetarium, its first institution for the popularisation of astronomy and space science, and the holder of a genuine world first as the first computerised planetarium. Its story — proposed in 1961, equipped by Carl Zeiss in 1974, built from 1977 and opened in 1980, renewed in 2018 and 2021 — parallels the Space Age itself, from Sputnik-era enthusiasm through the Shuttle era to the age of China's Shenzhou and Tiangong programmes, whose artefacts now stand in its halls. Beneath its Pineapple Bun dome on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, it continues to project its 8,000 stars for each new generation of Hong Kong stargazers.