Silke Jasso
A long time ago on a moon far, far away, Neil Armstrong gather moon dust on the Apollo 11 mission of 1969 only to have it forgotten about and accidentally auctioned off.
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That’s right, NASA forgot about the samples and auctioned it off with other space related items and the lucky buyer, Nancy Lee Carlson, happens to be a Chicago area attorney. Carlson bought the bag that contained the samples for just over $900 and immediately sent it back to NASA to find out if the dust was real, according to WGN.
After realizing their mistake in selling the samples, NASA refused to return the bag to Carlson so she sued them and, like something out of a galactic fairy tale, she won. Carlson, who remembers watching the astronauts of Apollo 11 bounce across the surface of the moon, told the Chicago Tribune she never imagined she would own a piece of the moon.
“It’s what every collector wants,” Christopher McHugh, Carlson’s attorney, told the Tribune. “You want to find the thing that’s super special.”
The bag holding the samples is nothing too amazing as it appears about the size of a dinner plate with a zipper and small tear in it, according to the Tribune. However, it’s what’s on the inside that counts as NASA confirmed the bag was used in the Apollo mission to collect the first samples from Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
“This artifact was never meant to be owned by an individual,” a statement released by NASA read. “We believe [it] belongs to the American people and should be on display for the public, which is where it was before all of these unfortunate events occurred.”
Attorney’s described the moon dust as a priceless national treasure at the hearings, but Carlson seems to think it’s worth about $4 million, which is what she intends to sell it for, donating some of the money to scientific research.
