Missing Moon Dust Found
- 11 years ago
Missing moon dust is found.
If you’ve forgotten to return your neighbor’s cake pan for weeks on end, don’t feel too bad.
Somebody from the University of California, Berkeley apparently forgot to send NASA back their moon dust 43 years ago.
20 vials of the stuff from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission were recently unearthed in a warehouse by archivist Karen Nelson.
Each one was labeled “24 July 1970” and along with them was found a 1971 paper about the carbon content of the samples.
The material was sent to 150 labs for analysis and was supposed to have been returned to NASA after testing.
Ms. Nelson contacted the space agency to report her find. They gave her the go-ahead to open the vacuum-sealed container housing the vials, but said they wanted their moon dust back.
Given their history with reclaiming even the smallest speck of it, their request isn’t surprising.
In 2011 a sample the size of a fingertip surfaced at a St. Louis auction house with an estimated worth of 1 thousand to 15 hundred dollars.
Upon hearing about the discovery, NASA investigators and the US attorney’s office swooped in, stopped the sale, and seized the lunar material.
If you’ve forgotten to return your neighbor’s cake pan for weeks on end, don’t feel too bad.
Somebody from the University of California, Berkeley apparently forgot to send NASA back their moon dust 43 years ago.
20 vials of the stuff from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission were recently unearthed in a warehouse by archivist Karen Nelson.
Each one was labeled “24 July 1970” and along with them was found a 1971 paper about the carbon content of the samples.
The material was sent to 150 labs for analysis and was supposed to have been returned to NASA after testing.
Ms. Nelson contacted the space agency to report her find. They gave her the go-ahead to open the vacuum-sealed container housing the vials, but said they wanted their moon dust back.
Given their history with reclaiming even the smallest speck of it, their request isn’t surprising.
In 2011 a sample the size of a fingertip surfaced at a St. Louis auction house with an estimated worth of 1 thousand to 15 hundred dollars.
Upon hearing about the discovery, NASA investigators and the US attorney’s office swooped in, stopped the sale, and seized the lunar material.