The Hong Kong Space Museum Tuesday announced that a 34 million HK dollars (about 4.4 million US dollars) renovation project will be carried out at its Space Theater.

Curator of the Space Museum Chan Ki-hung said that the project scope is to install a new digital planetarium projector and replace the seats with an interactive system.

"With a resolution exceeding 48 million pixels, the new digital planetarium projector system boasts the highest resolution in the world," said Chan, adding that the system can project full dome animations or movies and allows future expansion such as upgrading to project 3D full dome images.

Besides, the new seats will be installed with a multilingual facility that allows narration in more than four languages for a show.

The newly designed display unit installed on the armrest of the seat will allow individual viewers to select language and use the interactive features, such as short message service among the audience and participation in real-time games, said Chan.

The theater will be closed from Nov. 17 to June 30, 2009, for renovation. It will be the first time that the theater is carrying out such a large-scale refurbishment since its opening in 1980.