Time & Space Project

Over 800,000 visits were made to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in 2004 and numbers are steadily increasing. With high public demand for accessible, stimulating and high-quality information about our subjects we are undertaking a spectacular development of the historic site.

The £15million Time and Space Project will create new galleries about modern astronomy and time and establish a superb Lloyds Register Education Centre. At the heart of the project is The Peter Harrison Planetarium, a brand new state-of-the-art facility housed in a contemporary new building.

Work began on-site in February 2005. The Time galleries, the first stage of the project, will open in spring 2006.

The second stage – the planetarium, education centre and the Space galleries – will open in spring 2007.

Funding for Time and Space now completed

The National Maritime Museum announced on 17 November 2005 a £3million donation from Mr Peter Harrison, who will give the planetarium his family name. With this extremely generous gift, the full £15million has now been raised to fund Time and Space.

The appeal began three years ago and donations came from public, private and corporate sources. Our public campaign – 'A Universal Appeal' – received generous donations from visitors to the Museum and to our website.

The National Maritime Museum would like to express its gratitude to all those who have given to the campaign – sharing our vision of an expanded and enhanced Royal Observatory.

Find out who is supporting us.

Useful links

• Find out more about the Time and Space Project
• Read past project news
• Learn about the history of the Observatory
• Read more background information from the 2004 Time and Space display