NASA: You can also sell the soil on the moon if you want? -Moon, NASA, Moon – Fast Technology (Driven Home’s Media) – Technology changes the future

On December 17 last year, when people cheered for the successful end of the “Chang’e 5” mission to the moon, some people were entangled in a small “flaw” in this perfect plan:“Chang’e 5” originally planned to bring back 2,000 grams of lunar soil, but it actually brought back only 1,731 grams.

Such entanglement is not nitpicking. Amplified by space engineering, no matter how small things are, they will become some kind of unbearable weight.

The missing 269 grams of lunar soil is simply measured in money. If it is calculated based on the sale price of 0.2 grams of the Soviet “Lunar 16” gravel at Sotheby’s auction house in 2018 as high as $855,000 (estimated at $1 million), it is roughly equivalent to $1.15 billion;

If you refer to the $400,000 estimate of “Apollo 11 Experiment Moon Soil” weighing about 40 mg, which was listed on the official website of RR Auction on May 26 this year, it doubled to nearly $2.7 billion. . However, even if the sum is so large, it may not be the end.

The “Apollo 11 Experiment Lunar Soil” in the auction, source: PR Auction

In recent years, the auction price of Yueyang has continued to grow wildly. Take the “Apollo 11 Experiment Lunar Soil” (hereinafter referred to as “Lunar Soil No. 3032”) on the RR Auction as an example, when it was auctioned together with 66 slides and other materials in 2010,The transaction price is only one-fortieth of the current estimate.Therefore, some netizens commented: Moon soil, a new blue ocean in the investment field – of course, provided that you can buy it.

However, no one thought that for the bidders aiming at “Lunar soil No. 3032”, the premise of “being able to buy”, which was a sure thing, turned out to be a problem. On June 23, RR Auction withdrew from its official website “Lunar Soil No. 3032”, which had had more than a dozen rounds of bids, because NASA asked RR to stop auctioning this sample.

Moon soil “monopoly”

“According to the information and documents provided in the batch and evidence descriptions of NASA’s contemporaneous contract practice, NASA has legal title to the Apollo 11 lunar dust experiment material…”, wrote a lawyer in NASA’s Office of General Counsel. “Obviously, it’s undeniable that the materials that make up the experiment are also owned by NASA.”

This isn’t the first time NASA has done this. In part, it was NASA’s ongoing close monitoring of lunar material returned by Apollo missions, making it nearly impossible for it to land on the private auction market, that led to the high price of lunar soil. NASA has even been sued for it.

On June 27, 2016, Carlson filed a lawsuit against then-NASA administrator Charles Bolden, asking him to return a sample bag and pay compensatory damages. She bought the sample bag a year ago for $995.

At the time, the sample bag was described as containing lunar dust, but it was not determined whether it was part of the Apollo program. After winning the bid, Carlson contacted NASA for verification.

As a result, NASA not only determined that the dust in the bag really came from the moon, but also determined that the dust came from the Apollo program, the first human mission to the moon.

In NASA’s description, the outflow of the sample bag was purely accidental: In the decades after the Apollo program was completed, NASA successively lent some lunar samples to the American Space Museum for exhibition.

However, some of the bags are missing, not knowing when. It turned out that the then-incumbent curator of the museum had been secretly selling museum cultural relics and took the packaging bag home.

After the illegal sale of cultural relics, the curator was sentenced to three years in prison and fined $130,000. In order to collect the fine for the curator, the police auctioned off some of the curator’s space collection, including a one-month-old sample bag, which Carlson later acquired through the auction.

NASA had no idea the bag had been confiscated and then auctioned off until Carlson contacted NASA. So, as soon as the test results came out, NASA refused to return it.

“This artifact was never owned by an individual,” NASA spokesman William Jeffs said in a 2017 statement, saying it not only has scientific value but “represents a generation of American Enthusiasm for people to work hard for the country.”

At NASA’s insistence, the government attempted to settle with Carlson, offering to refund the auction price and shipping, and an additional $1,000 “thanks for assisting in the return” and “to offset any inconvenience that may have been suffered.”

Carlson, an attorney, rejected the offer and sued NASA for the return of the sample bags. In the end, Carlsen won. In 2017, she auctioned the bag for $1.8 million.

Two years later, Carlson sued NASA again, arguing that during testing of the bag, NASA damaged it and grabbed some moondust from it. In fact, after analyzing the samples, NASA scientists did keep those samples for analysis.

5 stubs, source: http://www.collectspace.com/

Carlson claims the loss prevented her from selling the bag at its original estimated value. It still ended in a victory for Carlsen. NASA returned five of the six stubs along with the dust to Carlson, a settlement with her. In April 2022, the 5-month soil stub sold for $504,375 at auction.

Now, going back to “Moon 3032”, we will find that its situation is very similar to Carlson’s lunar soil. No one disputed the attribution of the auction items until NASA stepped in.

“Lunar soil 3032” actually comes from the late entomologist Dr. Marion Brooks of the University of São Paulo. In 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts brought about 47.5 pounds of lunar rock back to Earth.

To fully understand the possible ill effects of this extraterrestrial material, NASA hired numerous scientists to study the responses of animals exposed to lunar rocks and dust.Among them, Brooks is responsible for the study of cockroaches that have eaten lunar soil.

Source: RR Auction

Brooks looked for evidence of pathological conditions caused by ingesting extraterrestrial substances through comparative experiments, as well as by dissecting cockroaches and sectioning them. In the end, she found no evidence of disease or pathogens, and observed that the lunar particles did not damage the cockroaches’ stomach cells. Brooks wrote the article “Apollo 11: Exposure of Lower Animals to Lunar Matter,” which was published in the journal Science.

After the project, Brooks put together a tissue section along with news clippings, postcards, etc. covering her research, and hung it on the wall as a memento. In 2007, Brooks died.

Three years later, Brooks’ daughter sold the memorabilia, along with 66 slides, for $10,000.On May 26 this year, “Moon 3032” went through the second auction until it was temporarily removed from the shelves due to NASA’s protests a few days ago.

“RR Auction does not take any position on the legality of NASA’s claims, but we have always sought to cooperate with the U.S. government on its ownership claims and have decided to withdraw the lot to allow all parties to clarify ownership issues,” RR Auction attorney Mark Zaid said in a statement. said in a statement.

And NASA, despite its setbacks on Carlson, remains firm, as it stated twelve years ago: “Auctions do not make this potential sale of items appropriate or legal. Continuing to sell these items is Improper and Illegal Disposal of NASA Property”.

As for who wins and who loses, it is currently unknown.

NASA has repeatedly conflicted with the auctioneer of the moon, behind which is actually a dispute over the ownership of space resources. As more and more countries carry out lunar landing programs, and the exploitation and use of space gradually becomes a reality, such contradictions will increase.

In recent years, some countries have passed laws to give citizens the ownership of resources extracted from celestial bodies, but the legality of owning, using and resale of space resources still needs further exploration.

hashtag:nasamoonmoon