A request to stop selling lunar rock samples and the cockroach corpses nourished by them was made by representatives of NASA to the people in charge of organizing the RR Auction. They argue that the US government owns the samples.
A man works in a laboratory next to cockroaches locked in a container at the laboratory of the centre of research on infectious diseases of the University Hospital Institute (IHU) Mediterranean Infection, in Marseille, on March 29, 2018. Marseille has inaugurated a research centre on infectious diseases, complete with insect breeding, a bacteria bank and hospital rooms for highly infectious patients. This project, launched in 2011, required 100 million euros of investment and aims at fighting infectious diseases, the leading cause of death in the world, killing 17 million people per year.
NASA Objects Auction of Dead Roaches That Ate Moon Dust
The initial samples collected from the Moon are fairly closely linked to cockroaches. It was tested for any potential toxicity and turned out okay. Later, the individuals passed away from natural causes.
New York Times article mentioned that Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of RR Auction, organized a "one-of-a-kind Apollo 11 rarity" sale. RR Auction, a company specializing in selling history and space artifacts, started the bidding for the auction on May 25 and had already hit $40,000.
Live bidding was scheduled to take place on Thursday at a hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But firm representatives canceled it when NASA asserted ownership of the project.
According to a story by the Associated Press, NASA claimed in a letter from a lawyer that the auctioneer could not sell items that still belonged to the space agency.
"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," a letter dated June 5 from NASA read, according to the Associated Press (via Independent).
In order to test for toxicity, lunar regolith samples from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission were transported back to Earth and given to cockroaches, plants, and other animals.
According to the AP, entomologist Marion Brooks of the University of Minnesota received some of the roaches for investigation in 1969 and discovered "no evidence of infectious agents."
AP's investigation added that the roaches and other materials never returned to NASA and stayed at Dr. Brooks's house until 2010, when her daughter sold them to an unidentified buyer who then took them to Remarkable Rarities. On June 22, NASA sent a follow-up letter requesting that the auctioneer works with a third party to deliver the goods to the space agency.
"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," NASA said per AP.
Legal Proceedings On The Way
With a $24 billion yearly budget, what could the renowned space agency possibly want with a few dead insects, their insides, and a few bits of lunar material? The same NY Times report said a NASA representative declined to comment, citing the current legal proceedings, although a 2018 audit conducted by the agency's inspector general provides some information.
According to the audit, the agency has lost a "significant amount" of its property due to its "lack of adequate procedures." It was discovered that, despite advancements achieved by NASA over the previous 60 years, the organization has struggled to recover property frequently due to a lack of ownership assertion and poor record-keeping.
The audit discovered that because of NASA's shoddy record-keeping, the organization misplaced a bag that astronaut Neil Armstrong had used to gather samples of lunar rocks. The little white purse brought $1.8 million at a Sotheby's auction in 2017. A Lunar Roving Vehicle prototype was seen in an Alabama neighborhood a few years back, thanks to a tip. It was ultimately sold at auction for an unknown sum by a scrap yard owner.
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