Moon Dust From 1969 Landing Sells for Half a Million Dollars at Auction

A pinch of dust from the 1969 moon landing has bought for in excess of $500,000 at Bonhams in New York. The sale marks the first time a contingency sample from Apollo 11 is sold legally at auction, in accordance to Bonhams, considering that NASA usually claims finish ownership of all lunar content. A 20-12 months saga entire of lawsuits and fraud allowed the unusual lunar soil to go less than the hammer.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong picked up a little bit of moon dust, put it inside a plastic bag, place the plastic bag inside a cloth bag, and introduced it back to Earth. The dust that sold was taken from the seams of that cloth bag (moon dust is exceptionally sticky).

Involving 1969 and 1972, astronauts brought back again 842 pounds of lunar content. The Bonhams moon dust, offered previous Wednesday, April 13 as aspect of its Place Historical past sale, comprises 5 samples for a microscope, set on carbon tape on top rated of the aluminum stubs made use of with an Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The carbon tape on every single stub is much less than 50 percent an inch extensive.

Even this very small total of moon dust has triggered a decades-long battle. The dust belonged to Nancy Lee Carlson, a law firm with an fascination in geology, who acquired it in a 2015 United States Marshals auction for $995. Carlson sent it to NASA to authenticate, but NASA seized the bag following they recognized it was from Apollo 11. Carlson sued, the bag was returned to her, and she offered it for $1.8 million at Sotheby’s in 2017.

Having said that, NASA experienced stored a part of Carlson’s moon dust to sample below a microscope. Carlson sued once again, and 5 out of the six samples had been returned to her.

The tale of how Carlson obtained the dust in the to start with put is even much more weird. Right after Armstrong returned to Earth with the bag, it was loaned to the Cosmosphere room museum, a Smithsonian affiliate in Hutchinson, Kansas, an hour’s drive from Wichita.

The museum’s director at the time, Max Ary, was identified to be stealing and providing museum artifacts. In 2006, he was convicted on charges of theft, fraud, and income laundering and sentenced to a few many years in jail.

When the FBI raided Ary’s house, they discovered various stolen objects, like Armstrong’s bag. Nevertheless, the bag was bewildered for one thing else, and its benefit went unrecognized. As a seized asset, it was detailed in a US Marshals auction, the place Carlson bought it in 2015.

Inspite of its intriguing backstory, the hammer price tag for Carlson’s moon dust fell shorter of Bonhams’s pre-sale estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million.

The US govt statements all possession of lunar content and has absent to great lengths to recover it from private citizens, most notably in 2011, when NASA seized lunar content from a 74-12 months-outdated lady who was striving to offer it. The dust was the sizing of a grain of rice and concealed inside of a paperweight. NASA done a sting procedure at a Denny’s diner, sending in an undercover agent and detaining the girl in the parking great deal.

When Armstrong’s bag made up of the dust sold at Sotheby’s in 2017, some activists denounced the auction, contacting it “lunar larceny.”

“The bag belongs in a museum, so the total globe can share in and rejoice the universal human accomplishment it signifies,” Michelle Hanlon, co-founder of the team For All Moonkind Inc., said in a assertion at the time.

Now that Carlson has bought all of her embattled moon dust, we really don’t know when, if at any time, the general public will be equipped to purchase the dust once again.