One small sample of the moon brought back to Earth in 1969 by the Apollo 11 astronauts is for sale.
It was well-traveled and once eaten. The dust was taken from the stomachs of the roaches. There are three insects in the lot.
That is, more or less, what is being offered by the New Hampshire-based firm that specializes in space artifacts. The moon dust, which is open in a new tab, is one of the highlights of the Remarkable Rarities auction, which runs through June 23.
When we represent something from Apollo 11 it is exciting because it is the most important mission, but when we get something like roaches that were fed lunar material, it shows how diverse the program was.
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Things got even weirder after NASA fed Apollo 11 moon rocks to roaches.
One needs a brief history on moon bugs to understand how and why some of the moon ended up in the stomachs of some bugs.
Scientists weren't sure what the astronauts would see when they landed on the moon. There were some mission planners who were worried that the landers or the astronauts would sink into a thick layer of soil on the moon, since robotic probes had been sent ahead to test landing on the lunar surface.
tethers were designed and other precautions were put in place to make sure that the Apollo 11 crewmates could leave the moon in a hurry.
Even though most biologists were certain that the moon was devoid of any indigenous life, they could not rule out that the astronauts would bring back germs that could threaten all life on Earth. The crew, their craft, and everything that came back with them were all put under a 21-day restriction.
The moon men and material were isolated from the outside world in a special facility built by NASA and used to conduct medical exams on astronauts.
Roughly 10% of the moon rocks brought back by the Apollo 11 mission were allocated for the destructive tests. No one expected to see that moon material again after being fed fish and insects.
No one, except the University of St. Paul entomologist who was contracted by NASA to study the moon dust-DRUNK cockneys. The space agency wanted a more complete understanding of any possible ill effects the extraterrestrial material might cause, despite the fact that no animals or astronauts died as a result of exposure to the moon.
While other researchers waited to receive moon rocks and pristine moon dust for study,Brooks was the first to be trusted with lunar samples.
She told the Minneapolis Tribune in 1969 that she pickedled roaches.
She was able to see the moon dust inside the insects with the naked eye, but she had to disassemble them to prepare tissue slides for study. She worked with a group of roaches that were fed a diet of raw lunar regolith and regular food.
She told the newspaper at the time that she found no evidence of infectious agents and that the lunar soil was not hazardous to the roaches.
Despite the clean bill of health, she continued her studies.
Where are the Apollo lunar rocks now?
When she retired from the university in 1986, she took one of the tissue slides, a newspaper clipping and a postcard from the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.
At the center of the display, a small glass with ground fines of lunar sample recovered from biological tests was placed.
She hung the pictures on the wall of her house for a long time. At the age of 89, she died at her home.
The sample display, along with two cases of microscope slides prepared from roaches that were fed moon rock, was sold at an auction for $10,000 by the former Regency-Superior Galleries of Beverly Hills, California.
There is a small amount of material inside the display. A tiny sample of Apollo 11 moon dust was auctioned off by Bonhams in April of this year for $504,000. The lunar samples were released by NASA to a collector after a number of lawsuits.
The three tiny pebbles that were brought back from the moon in 1970 by the former Soviet Union's Luna 16 robotic probe was sold for $855,000 by the auction house.
The lot will sell for $400,000, according to the estimates of the auction house. The opening bid was $10,000.
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