Three pieces of the Moon up for sale – The Wall Street Journal

DUBLIN — On a recent trip to Stonehenge, I learned that in Victorian days, people who visited the monument would be given a hammer and chisel and encouraged to take a piece of one of the henge stones home with them. Obviously, as time went by the authorities realised that this strategy would soon result in there being no Stonehenge for anyone to look at. Today, you cannot approach the circle of stones, only view it from a distance, and you're told to take nothing but photos and leave nothing but footprints. Apparently, the same rules don't yet apply to the Moon. The last Americans to visit our lonely satellite left footprints and a flag, and some other space travellers (these ones Russian) brought back some small rock fragments. These rocks are now going on auction – with enough money, you could own a small piece of the Moon. However, it seems likely that, should we ever become regular visitors to the Moon, we'd eventually have to adopt a take nothing policy. – Felicity Duncan.Your Chance to Own a Piece of the Moon.By Robert Lee Hotz.(The Wall Street Journal) Moon rocks will hit the auction block this week as collectors vie for hundreds of vintage artifacts that embody a growing nostalgia for the triumphs of the Cold War space race..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.In a sale Thursday devoted to space exploration, Sotheby's is auctioning three tiny shards of moon rock that it estimates will sell for up to $1m. The fragments were brought to Earth not by American Apollo astronauts, who were the first people to land there, but by a spindly unmanned craft launched by the Soviet Union.."It was the first sample returned by a robotic spacecraft," said Purdue University history professor Michael G. Smith, who studies the Soviet space effort. "That is one of a series of impressive technical firsts for the Soviet space program.".The moon specks are the only official lunar samples legally in private hands, according to Cassandra Hatton, vice president and senior specialist for science and technology at Sotheby's..Broadly speaking, material brought back from the moon belongs to the US or Russian governments, which funded the space missions that brought it all to Earth. Soviet-era unmanned missions returned about 10 ounces of moon soil. Apollo astronauts brought back 842 pounds of rocks, soil and dust..With so much space history to archive, though, NASA has struggled with fraud, theft, neglect and bureaucratic bumbling, according to an audit in October by the agency's inspector general. "A significant amount of historic personal property has been lost, misplaced, or taken by former employees and contractors due to the Agency's lack of adequate procedures," the auditors said..One NASA employee, for instance, took home the prototype of the lunar "buggy" that Apollo astronauts drove around the moon in the early 1970s. He parked it in his yard until a passing agency engineer noticed it. After waiting for months for NASA to file the paperwork to reclaim it, he sold it to a scrap dealer who, in turn, sold it to a private collector..More recently, space agency workers inadvertently junked a bag used by Apollo 11 astronauts to collect rocks during the first moon landing. A woman purchased it at a surplus property sale and, after a legal dispute with NASA, sold it through Sotheby's for $1.8m in 2016. Now, ownership of a vial said to contain moon dust, allegedly given by Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong to a neighbour, is embroiled in litigation..The moon rocks coming up for sale at Sotheby's in New York, however, were an official gift from the Soviet government to the widow of Sergei Korolev, the chief designer of their space program..Korolev's identity was a government secret for decades. He pioneered space exploration from the launch of Sputnik — the first satellite to orbit Earth — to the missions that carried the first men and women into space. He guided development of the Russian rocket still used today to ferry US astronauts to the space station.."Korolev was an incredible presence in the Soviet space program," said Asif Siddiqi, a specialist in Russian history at Fordham University in New York. "He was its symbolic guiding light, but also a manager and engineer. When he died in 1966, it was a terrible blow from which they never really recovered.".Four years after Korolev died, Soviet space engineers launched the first of three successful lunar-sample return missions. On the moon, the robot craft, called Luna-16, extracted 3.5 ounces of lunar soil and brought it home. The Soviet government gave three grains of it weighing about 0.2 grams to Nina Ivanovna Koroleva in an elaborate display case, to recognise her husband's role in the space program..Holding a clear legal title, she sold the lunar material in its original case at Sotheby's in 1993 to an American collector for $442,500. That same collector, who wants to remain anonymous, has now consigned it for sale. Sotheby's estimates it will fetch between $700,000 and $1m.."It remains to this day the only one we can sell without problems," said Ms. Hatton of Sotheby's. "You don't have to have a degree in astrophysics or be an engineer to be excited.".Among the other artifacts to be auctioned is the voice recorder from the first mission to carry a woman, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. She orbited Earth in 1963, about 20 years before the first US woman astronaut, Sally Ride, flew in space..Other auctions are happening amid the 50th anniversary of NASA's lunar missions, which commenced in December 1968 with the launch of Apollo 8, the first human voyage around the moon. A few weeks ago, the family of Neil Armstrong began selling hundreds of his mementos online through Heritage Auctions..Items for sale include flags that Armstrong brought on the Apollo 11 moon flight, handwritten notes and his NASA flight suit. The first group of artifacts brought in more than $5.2m, the auction house said. Two more auctions are scheduled for next year.."There is a particular nostalgia for the space race and the space exploration of the 1960s," said Dr. Siddiqi of Fordham. "It was a really cool and exciting time when the future in space seemed boundless.".Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com

Three pieces of the Moon up for sale – The Wall Street Journal

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