Bonhams was auctioning off Apollo 11 moon dust for $ 504,375 as part of the Space History Discount held in New York on Wednesday (April 13th). The amount, which included the buyer’s premium, is less than Bonham’s pre-auction estimate of $ 800,000 to $ 1.2 million. “Lot 21 on your screens is a unique opportunity to get a NASA-certified piece of the Apollo 11 contingency sample,” said Ian Ehling, Bonhams Director of Exquisite Books and Manuscripts, before opening the $ 220,000 offer. . The Apollo program: How NASA sent astronauts to the moon Ehling’s hammer fell to $ 400,000 after seven bids. The winner did not emerge. The successful sale marks the end of a complex and sometimes complex history of moon dust since it arrived on Earth in 1969. The tiny specimens, which were so small that Bonhams could not give an overall weight, reported their size. in small. found on the seams of a bag used to hold the first lunar specimen collected by an astronaut on the moon. Spots of lunar dust were used by a NASA curator to determine if the case, or “emergency sample return container disinfection bag,” had flown to the Apollo 11 mission after being sold at a state seizure auction in 2015. to abandon the bag, a series of lawsuits filed by the auction winner resulted in the bag being considered the buyer’s property. A subsequent litigation, which was settled out of court, ended with NASA also delivering the test samples after the bag was auctioned for $ 1,812,500 in 2017. Bonhams sold the samples as NASA delivered them, embedded in a 10mm black carbon strip attached to five stems of aluminum samples with a scanning electron microscope. Independent tests conducted at Bonhams’s request found that four of the five executives were retaining moon dust particles according to Armstrong’s lunar emergency sample. The fifth strain had lunar traces different from the other four, probably due to a change in testing techniques.
Apollo 11 moon particles as seen using a scanning electron microscope. The geological composition of the sample allowed NASA to identify its origin as the Moon’s Seas of Peace. (Image: Bonhams) NASA generally claims that the lunar material recovered from Apollo is a National Treasure and is not intended for private ownership. Narrow exceptions have been made for souvenirs kept by astronauts and soiled with lunar dust and two sets of international goodwill gifts. Even the moon rocks presented to the astronauts as Ambassador of Exploration Awards are only nominal. the samples are on loan from the space agency. The Apollo 11 emergency sample, which contained 492 grams (17.4 ounces) of material thinner than 0.4 inches (1 cm), as well as 12 rock fragments larger than 0.4 inches, remains under NASA control as and the majority of the 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar rock, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust brought back to Earth by the six Apollo missions that landed on the moon. Legal sales of man-made lunar material are rare. In 2018, Sotheby’s was auctioning off what was then the only government-certified sample of loose moon dust to individuals, three tiny pebbles brought back by the former Soviet Union’s Luna 16 robotic catheter in 1970. The grains, which weighed a total of about 0 , 2 grams (0.0007 ounces), sold for $ 855,000. The same presentation, originally given to the widow of Sergei Korolev, the “Master Designer” of the Soviet space program, was sold by Sotheby’s in 1993 for $ 442,500. With inflation, 2018 sales reflected an increase of approximately $ 87,500. Other dusty equipment from the Apollo moon and tape-raised lunar specimens have been sold, but without NASA certification, making the Bonhams specimens unique. The Bonhams Space History Sale included a total of 22 batches, including artifacts from the launch of the world’s first Sputnik satellite, astronaut autographs and photographs. Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2022 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
