The National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked a Boston auction house to not auction off cockroaches, moon dust and other items related to the 1969 Apollo 11 space mission, saying they are government property.
The space agency, in a letter, asked RR Auction to remove a specimen display from an Apollo 11-related experiment that was set to be part of the house’s Remarkable Rarities auction Thursday. NASA asked for RR’s help in finding the current property holder so it could recover the items.
“All Apollo samples, as stipulated in this collection of items, belong to NASA and no person, university, or other entity has ever been given permission to keep them after analysis, destruction, or other use for any purpose, especially for sale or individual display,” NASA said in its letter to the auction house last week.
RR Auction didn’t put the specimen display up for sale at its Remarkable Rarities event. RR’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, said the auction house is holding on to the lot until it receives a court-ordered subpoena, or both NASA and the consignor, the person who puts the item up for sale, tell them what to do with the items. Mr. Zaid declined to release the consignor’s name.
“NASA has been becoming far more proactive and aggressive on trying to reclaim items relating to the old space program,” Mr. Zaid said.
A NASA spokeswoman said it would be inappropriate for the agency to comment on an ongoing legal matter.
NASA hired Dr. Marion Brooks, then an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, to do an experiment, according to RR Auction. She studied cockroaches that had been fed lunar particles to observe possible pathological effects, according to a description of the items on RR’s website.
NASA said in its letter to Mr. Zaid that it couldn’t find the contract for Dr. Brooks’s work.
Mr. Zaid, who has previously done work for The Wall Street Journal, said the materials related to the study had been in Dr. Brooks’s possession and were displayed at her house. She died in 2007, and her daughter took possession of them before they were auctioned off a few years later, Mr. Zaid said.
