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AUSTRALIA MINTS WORLD'S 1ST COIN IN 2024Happy New Year, everyone. Before midnight arrived here on the U.S. East Coast, Don Cleveland of Australia passed along a story about the Royal Australian Mint's striking of the first coin in 2024. -Editor 
Twelve-year-old Izzy Zaharis (at center) with astrophysicist Brad Tucker of the Australian National University and Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra representing the Australian Space Agency (at left) and Royal Australian Mint chief executive officer Leigh Gordan after she won the chance to strike the first coin of 2024, a collectible dollar with the theme "Out of this World - Australia in Space." The world's first coin to be struck in 2024 highlights Australian space exploration history. 
"Out of this World - Australia in Space" was chosen by the Royal Australian Mint as its 2024 theme "to showcase Australia's history and significance as one of the earliest nations to launch its own satellite." The coin's reverse, or tails side, depicts an Australian astronaut on a spacewalk and the launch of WRESAT-1 on a modified U.S. Redstone rocket in 1967. The satellite, which carried upper atmospheric radiation measurement experiments, established Australia as the seventh nation to put a satellite into orbit and the third country to launch from its own territory, after the Soviet Union and United States. The coin's design also includes Earth, with the Australian continent clearly visible, and the moon, the latter an homage to the country's role in relaying the live television signal during Apollo 11, the first moon landing, and to an Australian-built robotic rover that will explore the lunar surface as part of NASA's Artemis program. Along the border of the coin's reverse are inscribed the words, "rovers, technology, rockets, astronauts, satellites, communications, GPS, astronomy, exploration and discovery." The mint worked with the Australian Space Agency to design the coin.
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Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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