NASA Wants Its Apollo 11 Moon Dust And Cockroach Carcasses Back. Auction Put On Hold

The moon dust was collected during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission and later fed to a few cockroaches as part of an experiment to see if the lunar material was toxic.

NASA has said it wants its moon dust and cockroaches back. The moon dust being referred to here was collected during the Apollo 11 mission of 1969 and subsequently fed to a few cockroaches as part of an experiment to see if the lunar material contained any kind of pathogen that could pose a threat to terrestrial life.

With this experiment material, which included a vial containing about 40 milligrams of moon dust and three cockroach carcasses, listed to go under the hammer, NASA asked Boston-based RR Auction to halt the sale, news agency Associated Press reported.

In a letter to the auction house, a NASA lawyer said the material still belongs to the federal government, the report said. The material was expected to fetch at least $400,000 but has been taken off the auction block, RR said Thursday.

“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,” the NASA letter dated June 15 said, according to the AP report.

“We are requesting that you no longer facilitate the sale of any and all items containing the Apollo 11 Lunar Soil Experiment (the cockroaches, slides, and post-destructive testing specimen) by immediately stopping the bidding process,” the letter added.
On June 22, NASA sent another letter to 

RR Auction, asking it to work with the material’s current owner on how it can be returned to the government.

Moon Dust From 1969 Apollo 11 Mission

The 1969 Apollo 11 mission brought back to Earth more than 21.3 kilograms of lunar rock back to Earth. Some of this was fed to insects, fish and other small creatures as researchers sought to see if it would kill them.

According to a 1969 media report cited by AP, the cockroaches that were fed the moon dust were sent to the University of Minnesota for entomologist Marion Brooks to dissect and study them.

“I found no evidence of infectious agents,” she told the Minneapolis Tribune for the October 1969 report. Brooks, who died in 2007, had said she found no proof that the material was toxic or caused any other ill effects in the insects.

The moon rock and the cockroaches, however, did not find their way back to NASA. They remained at Brooks’ home, and her daughter sold them in 2010.

A consignor, who RR did not identify, now put them up for sale again. Quoting RR attorney Mark Zaid, the AP report said the auctioneer is holding on to the lot for now, but it is ultimately up to the consignor to work something out with NASA.