Stolen and missing moon rocks
Encyclopedia
Of the 270 Apollo 11 Moon Rocks and Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks that were given to the nations of the world by the Nixon Administration approximately 180 are currently unaccounted for. Many of the moon rocks that are accounted for have been locked away in storage for decades. The location of the rocks has been tracked by researchers and hobbyists because of their rarity and the difficulty of obtaining more. Moon rocks have been subjects of theft and forgery as well.
was known as Operation Lunar Eclipse. Originally two undercover agents were involved in this sting, Senior Special Agent Joseph Gutheinz of NASA's Office of Inspector General, posing as Tony Coriasso, and Inspector Bob Cregger of the United States Postal Inspection Service
, posing as John Marta. This sting operation was later expanded to include Agents from the United States Customs Service
. Agents posted a quarter page advertisement in USA Today
asking for Moon rocks. The Agents were targeting individuals selling bogus moon rocks, which con-artists sell to the elderly and to space enthusiasts. The sting operation was led by NASA Office of Inspector General
Senior Special Agent Joseph Gutheinz.
After leaving NASA for a teaching position at the University of Phoenix
, Arizona, Gutheinz challenged his criminal justice
graduate students to locate the goodwill moon rocks. He subsequently extended this project to also cover the missing Apollo 11 moon rocks President Nixon gave to the states and nations of the world in 1969. Hundreds of graduate students have participated in this project from 2002 to present and while many moon rocks have been found, others are now known to be missing, stolen or destroyed. Gutheinz patterned this college project after Operation Lunar Eclipse, an undercover sting operation he led in 1998, while he was still with NASA. Beginning in 2002, his graduate students began reporting to him that both the Cyprus
Apollo 11
moon rock (which is actually a collection of lunar dust in a Lucite ball and Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock (a pebble size moon rock) were missing.
Apollo 11 Moon Rock by her professor. On August 18, 2010, in a story she wrote about her investigation in the Capital City Weekly newspaper, of Juneau Alaska, she stated that after conducting a thorough investigation for Alaska's Apollo 11 Moon Rock she has concluded that it is missing. She advised that she planned to continue to look for the moon rock and asked for the help of the citizens of Alaska to accomplish her goal of finding it.
In 1973, there was a massive fire at the Alaska Transportation Museum where the moon rocks were being housed. Coleman Anderson (a crab fishing captain who was on the TV show, Deadliest Catch) went to the museum to scrounge through the garbage from the fire to see if there would be anything worth saving. Coleman was a kid at the time. He found the moon rocks, cleaned them up over the next few years and he still has them.
To clear title to the rocks he filed a lawsuit against the State of Alaska, asking the Court to deem the rocks his sole property.
, had no idea of where it was, or of the state even receiving it.
In his June 26, 2011 Op/Ed appearing in the Cyprus Mail entitled "Houston we have a problem: we didn't give Cyprus its moon rock", Joseph Gutheinz revealed that after NASA recovered the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock over a year ago they failed to give the moon rock to its legal owner, the nation of Cyprus.
.
, in the island nation of Malta
. According to an Associated Press story appearing in USA Today "there are no surveillance cameras and no custodians at the Museum of Natural History because of insufficient funding. The only attendant is the ticket-seller"… "A Maltese flag displayed next to the rock — which the U.S. astronauts had taken up with them — was not taken". Joseph Gutheinz, a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Special Agent who heads up a "Moon Rock Project" at the University of Phoenix (where he assigns his students the task of hunting down missing moon rocks), urged the Maltese authorities to grant an amnesty period to the thieves. He advised that only an amateur thief would have taken the Maltese Goodwill Moon Rock and left the plaque and flag behind, as all three together would have been self-authenticating and eliminated the risk of a geologist needing to authenticate the moon rock. Malta’s Goodwill Moon Rock has never been recovered and continues to be actively pursued.
Goodwill Moon Rock may have been auctioned off by the estate of its executed former leader, Nicolae Ceausescu
. Both Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena Ceausescu
, were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day, December 25, 1989, for the crime of genocide. As late as 2009, Romania believed it only received one moon rock from the Nixon Administration, the Apollo 11 moon rock, and took issue with those who argued otherwise. Joseph Gutheinz, a retired NASA OIG Senior Special Agent, now Professor, who oversees the Moon Rock Project provided Daniel Ionascu of the Jurnalul information from the U.S. National Archives which showed that the Romanian Goodwill Moon Rock was in fact presented to Romania. Romania’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock is at the National History Museum in Bucharest.
’s Administration by the Nixon Administration, were missing. Pablo Jáuregui, the Science Editor of Elmundo, a Spanish newspaper, disclosed in a July 20, 2009 story entitled: "Franco’s grandson: My mother lost Moon stone given her by Grandfather", that the Spanish Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock had finally been given back to the people of Spain in 2007 by the family of Admiral Luis Carrero; and Jáuregui suggest the Spain’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock, as referenced in the title of the story, was last known to be in the Franco’s families hands, and is now unaccounted for. Jáuregui wrote, as translated: "As for the stone that Kissinger gave Carrero Blanco, confirmed yesterday" by "the son of …Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco"… "the stone was in possession of the family (first in the home of his widow, and after that of his eldest son ), until in 2007 they decided to donate the Naval Museum, where it is"…on display…. "today, along with a Spanish flag which traveled aboard the Apollo 17 mission to the moon. " My son told me that the gift was dedicated to 'Spanish people', so it seemed right to donate it," recalls Luis Carrero Blanco." Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco
was assassinated while in Office by the ETA, a terrorist organization.
As for Spain’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock the trail is more confused. Jáuregui relates the following from Franco’s grandson: "The grandson of Franco stressed that neither he nor any other member of his family"…had been told…. "that there might be some legal or ethical problem"…regarding …"the Moonstone…." "If you get anything and it's yours, why not going (Translation) to sell?" He said. " In any case the rock never sold, but according to Franco, now" he does "not know where it is. As my mother is a woman with many things in many houses, in a move or redecorate a room, in the end had to go astray," he explains. Students assigned to the Moon Rock Project are currently looking for leads to Spain’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock in Switzerland.
listed numerous sources suggesting the Arkansas Goodwill Moon Rock had gone missing noting that the rock was potentially worth 5 million dollars. The rock was presented to the state by astronaut Richard H. Truly
in 1976 at a Boy Scout event in Little Rock. Its whereabouts remained unknown until September 21, 2011, when it was discovered by Michael Hodge, an archivist with the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, while processing the gubernatorial papers of Bill Clinton
.
’s office, capitol and state archives were contacted but none knew of the whereabouts of the items. Both moon rocks were later found in a "routine inventory of gifts given to the governor’s office over the years", in a locked cabinet in the Governor’s Office. A senior advisor to the governor vowed to increase security and register the items with the state's Foundation of Cultural Arts.
and the Missouri State Department of Natural Resources claimed that Missouri's Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was in storage. Photos in news stories about the location of the rock were later identified as coming from Apollo 11. Then Senator Kit Bond
, who was the Governor of Missouri when the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was gifted to the state, stated that he has no recollection of receiving a moon rock and The Missouri State Archives, and the State Museum, reversing what they had previously stated, have no information on Missouri having the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock concluding that it was presumed missing. The rock was later found amongst Bond's possessions by his staff and it was returned to the state.
where it is planned for permanent display in the fall of 2011 when the museum expansion is completed. Brown obtained the rock from a colleague in 2003 who found it in a desk drawer at the state Commerce Department. Brown's colleague received permission to lend the artifact to Brown who used it in presentations on space and space-related science to students over the next several years.
Apollo 11 Moon Rock while two of her teammates were charged with hunting down the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks of Oregon and Louisiana. Toni Dowdell and her two teammates received this assignment from her professor, a retired Senior Special Agent with NASA's Office of Inspector General. This assignment was part of an ongoing assignment known as the Moon Rock Project, where students are assigned the task of hunting down moon rocks all over America and the world. In a February 19, 2010 article Toni Dowdell wrote for the Daily News of Greenville Michigan, Dowdell described how her teammates in this investigation discerned that both the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks of Oregon and of Louisiana remain unaccounted for, but how she successfully tracked down her assigned moon rock, the Oregon Apollo 11 Moon Rock. As with many moon rock gifts the Nixon Administration gave to the states and the nations of the world the first problem she encountered was a lack of a document trail. However, by reaching out to people, to include an operator in the state Capitol, she found the moon rock hidden in the ceremonial Governor’s Office of Oregon.
Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock by her professor, a retired Senior Special Agent with NASA's Office of Inspector General. This moon rock was presented to West Virginia in 1974 and is valued at 5 million dollars. On May 16, 2010, Rick Steelhammer of the Gazette-Mail of Charleston, West Virginia wrote a front page story documenting Sandra Shelton's investigative findings which revealed that the West Virginia Goodwill Moon Rock was missing. Predicated on that news story retired dentist Robert Conner called Ms. Shelton and told her that he had the West Virginia
Goodwill Moon Rock. Ms. Shelton informed her professor who advised the Governor's Office. Dr. Conner advised that his deceased brother was the former business partner of former West Virginia Governor Arch A. Moore, Jr.
, and that Conner acquired the moon rock upon the death of his brother, from his brothers belongings. In her June 29 story appearing in the Denver Post reporter Sarah Horn wrote that "Shelton was honored by the state for her detective work.". Shelton was awarded a certificate by the Governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin, lll, for her role in recovering the West Virginia Goodwill Moon Rock.
, lied about his age in order to compete in an essay contest, the winner of which would serve as participate in a "10-day International Youth Science Tour, in which all the countries in the United Nations were invited to offer up "youth ambassadors" aged 17 to 21. These youth ambassadors were to witness first-hand the launch in Florida..." of Apollo 17…" Eighty countries accepted the invitation, including Canada. Matthews won the contest, and when his true age came out, Canadian officials decided to let him go anyway. As the student ambassador, it was decided that Canada's Goodwill Moon Rock was mailed to him where he kept it at his home. Eventually he was asked to turn the moon rock over to Canada, which he did. The rock was reportedly stolen in 1978, while on tour. In 2003, University of Phoenix graduate students tracked down the rock to a storage facility at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Canada. After 30 years of sitting in storage in the Canadian Museum of Nature the Canadian Goodwill Moon Rock finally went on display at the Canadian Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa Canada, on July 23, 2009.
reporter Toby Sterling (Netherlands Bureau) and Cyprus Mail
reporter Lucy Millett, the daughter of the British Ambassador to Cyprus, Gutheinz was advised by his friend and space memorabilia expert Robert Pearlman (CollectSpace.com) that Pearlman had learned in 2003 that the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock was never presented to Cyprus, but retained by the son of an American diplomat. The American government was advised about this situation in 2003 and did nothing. Upon learning the truth Gutheinz reached out to both the American Embassy in Cyprus and the Cyprus Government to convey the facts; he then filed a request for a Congressional Inquiry into the case of the missing Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock. Subsequently, he caused the facts about the moon rock to be published in the press in order to motivate the person who had the moon rock to do the right thing, and return it.
The diplomat’s son thereafter began negotiating with NASA's Office of Inspector General, and did so for 5 months until the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock was recovered. The diplomat's son's name has never been disclosed.
. Rosen offered the 1.142 gram rock to undercover Agents for 5 million dollars. After two months of negotiations with Rosen, this sting operation ended up in a Bank of America
vault where the Moon rock was seized. The Moon rock was then subject to a 5 year civil case known as: "United States of America v. One Lucite Ball containing Lunar Material (one Moon Rock) and One Ten Inch by Fourteen Inch Wooden Plaque". This case resulted in the forfeiture of the Moon rock to the Federal Government on March 24, 2003.
After the Moon rock was officially handed back to the American Government it was sent back to Johnson Space Center where it was refurbished so that it could be once again presented to the people of Honduras, which happened on September 22, 2003 in a ceremony at NASA's Headquarters in Washington, D.C. where NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe
presented the Moon rock to Ambassador Mario M. Canahuati
, of Honduras. Also in attendance at this ceremony was Joseph Gutheinz, the leader of the sting operation, who gave a first hand account of the sting operation to Ambassador Canahuati. Finally on February 28, 2004, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe
flew to Honduras where he formally presented the Moon rock to Honduran president Ricardo Maduro
. In 2007, Gutheinz, a past recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal
, was featured in the BBC Two
documentary
Moon for Sale talking about the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock and this unique case. Today the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock is on display at the Centro Interactivo Chiminike, an education center in Tegucigalpa
that receives hundreds of young student visitors per day."
. The Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was given to Irish President Erskine Childers
who later died in office. When the widow of President Childers, Rita Dudley Childers, requested the rock as a keepsake of her late husband, this very popular first lady’s request was denied, as the Irish Government reasoned the Irish Goodwill Moon Rock belonged to the people of Ireland and not just one individual.
reported two brothers, Ronald and Brian Trochelmann, who were previously charged in 1998 in "U.S. District Court in Manhattan…"for…"a scheme to sell a phony moon rock for millions of dollars," both plead guilty to wire fraud, a felony, for perpetrating that scheme. "The brothers claimed that their father had invented a space-food packaging process that was used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s. The Trochelmann’s alleged that the rock had been brought from the moon by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean
and given to John Glenn
. They claimed Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth and later a U.S. senator, had given the rock to their father in recognition of his supposed invention." …" The brothers had negotiated a consignment agreement with Phillips Son & Neale, a Manhattan auction house, to sell the rock in December 1995. However, before the auction took place, the rock was confiscated by FBI agents in December 1995 prior to the scheduled auction." This story first broke in a New York Times Article written by Lawrence Van Gelder
on December 2, 1995. At that time NASA expressed the belief that the moon rock might have been real as it matched the general description of a moon rock that was stolen in 1970. "Eileen Hawley, a spokeswoman for NASA, said of the sample offered through Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers and Appraisers: We have a rock that is classified as lost, an Apollo 12 lunar sample of approximately the same weight. With that information, we need to look at this—that this might be a true lunar sample. Ms. Hawley said a rock sample collected during the Apollo 12 mission had been part of a shipment of registered and certified mail that was stolen while en route to a researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1970. The space agency received a call on Thursday from the Postal Investigative Service in New York, she said, after articles about the impending auction had been published. The service passed along a tip from the retired inspector, who was not identified, about a possible connection between the theft and the rock to be auctioned." This scheme and schemes like it were the inspiration for the undercover sting operation known as Operation Lunar Eclipse, which resulted in the acquisition of the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock in December 1998.
, Toby Sterling recounted how a spokesman for the Dutch National Museum, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, acknowledged on August 26, 2009, "that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by"…Apollo 11… "US astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.."… "The museum acquired the rock after the death of former prime minister Willem Drees
in 1988. Drees received it as a private gift on October 9, 1969 from then-US ambassador J. William Middendorf
during a visit by the three Apollo 11 astronauts, part of their ‘Giant Leap’ goodwill tour after the first moon landing." The museum acknowledged that though they did vet the moon rock they failed to double check it. The museum was under the incorrect belief that this moon rock was one of the 135 Apollo 11 moon rocks that were presented to the nations of the world by the Nixon Administration. "It's a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone," said Frank Beunk, a geologist involved in the investigation.
by interns Thad Roberts and Tiffany Fowler. The pair used knowledge of the security around the rocks gained during their internship to remove a safe containing the samples.Roberts is a certified pilot and scuba diver who was an ambitious student pursuing degrees in Physics, Geology and Anthropology who aspired to be an astronaut. Fellow intern Shae Saur and accomplice Gordon McWhorter were also later arrested for their role in the theft and attempted sale of the rocks.The theft also included a meteorite that may have revealed information about life on Mars.
Roberts advertised the rocks to a Belgian mineralogy club website which was forwarded to the FBI who, with the help of Belgian amateur astronomer Axel Emmermann, set up a sting in Orlando, Florida in July 2002 where Roberts and Fowler were arrested. Roberts was also charged with stealing Dinosaur bones and other fossils from his school, the University of Utah
.
The theft was the subject of the 2011 book "Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History
."
lunar sample on open display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum
was slightly damaged…during an apparent vandalism attempt. It is possible that theft was the object of the attack on the sample, but both museum and National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials believe vandalism was the primary objective. About 2 cubic millimeters of the triangular fine-grained basalt were chipped away during the incident that involved a hard blow to the sample with a sharp object. NASA believes no part of the sample was obtained by the vandal. The area around the sample's display case was swept immediately after the incident, and the sweeper bag is now at the Johnson Space Center, where it is being sifted in an attempt to obtain the missing material."
The author stated that "The 40-gram sample on display is the first touchable moon rock. Museum visitors are able to feel directly the texture of the lunar material, a departure from strict NASA policy that dictates that no individual ever handle lunar samples directly as a guard against contamination. "
entitled "Police Look for Stolen Moon Rocks" the author wrote the following: "Memphis police are looking for some moon rocks taken from a NASA van that was stolen." The van was assigned to Louis Marshall of Memphis, who conducts education programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The van was stolen from outside his home Tuesday night, driven to a field and set afire, police said Friday. A space suit in the van was left to burn. But thieves took some lunar rock and soil specimens, police said. Marshall said it was hard to put a value on them. It's stuff that belongs to all of us,' he said.' I'm out of business right now,' said Marshall. It will take a while to replace the items, he said. NASA officials said that out of 384 kilograms (846.6 lb) of moon rock retrieved through the years, the sample was not a big loss. I don't know what value it would be except just to gloat over it personally,' said NASA spokesman Terry White about the theft. White said theft is not a common problem with the NASA exhibits, which are shown to schools around the country.’ I’d always thought, Who's going to mess with a big red van with NASA on it?' Marshall said." There is no indication that this theft was related to a moon rock theft that followed just a few days later in Louisiana.
Investigations
In 1998, a unique Federal law enforcement undercover operation was created to identify and arrest individuals selling bogus Moon rocks. This sting operationSting operation
In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person committing a crime. A typical sting will have a law-enforcement officer or cooperative member of the public play a role as criminal partner or potential victim and go along with a suspect's actions to gather...
was known as Operation Lunar Eclipse. Originally two undercover agents were involved in this sting, Senior Special Agent Joseph Gutheinz of NASA's Office of Inspector General, posing as Tony Coriasso, and Inspector Bob Cregger of the United States Postal Inspection Service
United States Postal Inspection Service
The United States Postal Inspection Service is the law enforcement arm of the United States Postal Service. Its jurisdiction is defined as "crimes that may adversely affect or fraudulently use the U.S...
, posing as John Marta. This sting operation was later expanded to include Agents from the United States Customs Service
United States Customs Service
Until March 2003, the United States Customs Service was an agency of the U.S. federal government that collected import tariffs and performed other selected border security duties.Before it was rolled into form part of the U.S...
. Agents posted a quarter page advertisement in USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
asking for Moon rocks. The Agents were targeting individuals selling bogus moon rocks, which con-artists sell to the elderly and to space enthusiasts. The sting operation was led by NASA Office of Inspector General
NASA Office of Inspector General
The NASA Office of Inspector General is the inspector general office in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the space agency of the United States...
Senior Special Agent Joseph Gutheinz.
After leaving NASA for a teaching position at the University of Phoenix
University of Phoenix
The University of Phoenix is a for-profit institution of higher learning. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Group Inc. which is publicly traded , an S&P 500 corporation based in Phoenix, Arizona...
, Arizona, Gutheinz challenged his criminal justice
Criminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
graduate students to locate the goodwill moon rocks. He subsequently extended this project to also cover the missing Apollo 11 moon rocks President Nixon gave to the states and nations of the world in 1969. Hundreds of graduate students have participated in this project from 2002 to present and while many moon rocks have been found, others are now known to be missing, stolen or destroyed. Gutheinz patterned this college project after Operation Lunar Eclipse, an undercover sting operation he led in 1998, while he was still with NASA. Beginning in 2002, his graduate students began reporting to him that both the Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
Apollo 11
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...
moon rock (which is actually a collection of lunar dust in a Lucite ball and Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock (a pebble size moon rock) were missing.
Alaska
Elizabeth Riker was assigned the task of hunting down the AlaskaAlaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
Apollo 11 Moon Rock by her professor. On August 18, 2010, in a story she wrote about her investigation in the Capital City Weekly newspaper, of Juneau Alaska, she stated that after conducting a thorough investigation for Alaska's Apollo 11 Moon Rock she has concluded that it is missing. She advised that she planned to continue to look for the moon rock and asked for the help of the citizens of Alaska to accomplish her goal of finding it.
In 1973, there was a massive fire at the Alaska Transportation Museum where the moon rocks were being housed. Coleman Anderson (a crab fishing captain who was on the TV show, Deadliest Catch) went to the museum to scrounge through the garbage from the fire to see if there would be anything worth saving. Coleman was a kid at the time. He found the moon rocks, cleaned them up over the next few years and he still has them.
To clear title to the rocks he filed a lawsuit against the State of Alaska, asking the Court to deem the rocks his sole property.
New Jersey
The experts and politicians in New Jersey including former Governor Brendan ByrneBrendan Byrne
Brendan Thomas Byrne is an American Democratic Party politician from New Jersey, who served as the 47th Governor of New Jersey, from 1974 to 1982.-Early life and education:...
, had no idea of where it was, or of the state even receiving it.
Cyprus
While the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon rock presented to Cyprus was recovered, the Apollo 11 rock given to the country remains missing.In his June 26, 2011 Op/Ed appearing in the Cyprus Mail entitled "Houston we have a problem: we didn't give Cyprus its moon rock", Joseph Gutheinz revealed that after NASA recovered the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock over a year ago they failed to give the moon rock to its legal owner, the nation of Cyprus.
Ireland
The Apollo 11 rock presented to Ireland was accidentally discarded in a landfill known as the Finglas Dump after a fire consumed the room it was housed in at the National Museum of Ireland in October 1977. The Apollo 17 Goodwill Rock remains with the National Museum of IrelandNational Museum of Ireland
The National Museum of Ireland is the national museum in Ireland. It has three branches in Dublin and one in County Mayo, with a strong emphasis on Irish art, culture and natural history.-Archaeology:...
.
Malta
On May 18, 2004, Malta’s Goodwill Moon Rock was stolen from Malta’s Museum of Natural History in MdinaMdina
Mdina, Città Vecchia, or Città Notabile, is the old capital of Malta. Mdina is a medieval walled town situated on a hill in the centre of the island. Punic remains uncovered beyond the city’s walls suggest the importance of the general region to Malta’s Phoenician settlers. Mdina is commonly...
, in the island nation of Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
. According to an Associated Press story appearing in USA Today "there are no surveillance cameras and no custodians at the Museum of Natural History because of insufficient funding. The only attendant is the ticket-seller"… "A Maltese flag displayed next to the rock — which the U.S. astronauts had taken up with them — was not taken". Joseph Gutheinz, a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Special Agent who heads up a "Moon Rock Project" at the University of Phoenix (where he assigns his students the task of hunting down missing moon rocks), urged the Maltese authorities to grant an amnesty period to the thieves. He advised that only an amateur thief would have taken the Maltese Goodwill Moon Rock and left the plaque and flag behind, as all three together would have been self-authenticating and eliminated the risk of a geologist needing to authenticate the moon rock. Malta’s Goodwill Moon Rock has never been recovered and continues to be actively pursued.
Romania
University of Phoenix graduate students uncovered evidence that the RomaniaRomania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
Goodwill Moon Rock may have been auctioned off by the estate of its executed former leader, Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
. Both Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena Ceausescu
Elena Ceausescu
Elena Ceaușescu was the wife of Romania's Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, and Deputy Prime Minister of Romania.-Background:She was born Elena Petrescu into a peasant family in Petrești commune, Dâmboviţa County, in the informal region of Wallachia. Her family was supported by her father's job...
, were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day, December 25, 1989, for the crime of genocide. As late as 2009, Romania believed it only received one moon rock from the Nixon Administration, the Apollo 11 moon rock, and took issue with those who argued otherwise. Joseph Gutheinz, a retired NASA OIG Senior Special Agent, now Professor, who oversees the Moon Rock Project provided Daniel Ionascu of the Jurnalul information from the U.S. National Archives which showed that the Romanian Goodwill Moon Rock was in fact presented to Romania. Romania’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock is at the National History Museum in Bucharest.
Spain
Evidence surfaced that both Spain’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock and Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock, that were given to the General Francisco FrancoFrancisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
’s Administration by the Nixon Administration, were missing. Pablo Jáuregui, the Science Editor of Elmundo, a Spanish newspaper, disclosed in a July 20, 2009 story entitled: "Franco’s grandson: My mother lost Moon stone given her by Grandfather", that the Spanish Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock had finally been given back to the people of Spain in 2007 by the family of Admiral Luis Carrero; and Jáuregui suggest the Spain’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock, as referenced in the title of the story, was last known to be in the Franco’s families hands, and is now unaccounted for. Jáuregui wrote, as translated: "As for the stone that Kissinger gave Carrero Blanco, confirmed yesterday" by "the son of …Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco"… "the stone was in possession of the family (first in the home of his widow, and after that of his eldest son ), until in 2007 they decided to donate the Naval Museum, where it is"…on display…. "today, along with a Spanish flag which traveled aboard the Apollo 17 mission to the moon. " My son told me that the gift was dedicated to 'Spanish people', so it seemed right to donate it," recalls Luis Carrero Blanco." Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco
Luis Carrero Blanco
Don Luis Carrero Blanco, 1st Duke of Carrero Blanco, Grandee of Spain was a Spanish admiral and long-time confidant of dictator Francisco Franco.- Biography :...
was assassinated while in Office by the ETA, a terrorist organization.
As for Spain’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock the trail is more confused. Jáuregui relates the following from Franco’s grandson: "The grandson of Franco stressed that neither he nor any other member of his family"…had been told…. "that there might be some legal or ethical problem"…regarding …"the Moonstone…." "If you get anything and it's yours, why not going (Translation) to sell?" He said. " In any case the rock never sold, but according to Franco, now" he does "not know where it is. As my mother is a woman with many things in many houses, in a move or redecorate a room, in the end had to go astray," he explains. Students assigned to the Moon Rock Project are currently looking for leads to Spain’s Apollo 11 Moon Rock in Switzerland.
Arkansas
In a front page story, the Arkansas Democrat-GazetteArkansas Democrat-Gazette
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is the newspaper of record in the U.S. state of Arkansas, printed in Little Rock with a northwest edition published in Lowell...
listed numerous sources suggesting the Arkansas Goodwill Moon Rock had gone missing noting that the rock was potentially worth 5 million dollars. The rock was presented to the state by astronaut Richard H. Truly
Richard H. Truly
Richard Harrison Truly is a retired Vice Admiral in the United States Navy, Naval Aviator, former astronaut, and was the eighth Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1989 to 1992...
in 1976 at a Boy Scout event in Little Rock. Its whereabouts remained unknown until September 21, 2011, when it was discovered by Michael Hodge, an archivist with the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, while processing the gubernatorial papers of Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
.
Colorado
Based on the investigation of a graduate student, former Governor John Vanderhoof, then age 88, acknowledged he had the Goodwill Moon Rock presented to the people of Colorado in his personal possession and agreed give it back to the state. On August 25, 2010, the Colorado Goodwill Moon Rock was unveiled at the Colorado School of the Mines Museum by Dr. Bruce Geller, the museum curator.Hawaii
Flaws in the State of Hawaii inventory control system were highlighted when an estimated $10 million dollars in moon rock from Apollo 11 and the Apollo 17 Goodwill Rock could not be located in 2009. Curators and officials at every museum and university in the state along with then Governor Linda LingleLinda Lingle
Linda Lingle was the sixth Governor of Hawaii. Lingle holds a number of distinctions: first Republican elected governor of Hawaii since the departure of William F...
’s office, capitol and state archives were contacted but none knew of the whereabouts of the items. Both moon rocks were later found in a "routine inventory of gifts given to the governor’s office over the years", in a locked cabinet in the Governor’s Office. A senior advisor to the governor vowed to increase security and register the items with the state's Foundation of Cultural Arts.
Missouri
Confusion erupted in 2010 when employees with the Missouri State MuseumMissouri State Museum
The Missouri State Museum is Missouri's showpiece museum. It was founded in 1919 and is located in Jefferson City, Missouri, inside the state capitol on the ground floor of the building....
and the Missouri State Department of Natural Resources claimed that Missouri's Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was in storage. Photos in news stories about the location of the rock were later identified as coming from Apollo 11. Then Senator Kit Bond
Kit Bond
Christopher Samuel "Kit" Bond is a former United States Senator from Missouri and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, he defeated Democrat Harriett Woods by a margin of 53%-47%. He was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004...
, who was the Governor of Missouri when the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was gifted to the state, stated that he has no recollection of receiving a moon rock and The Missouri State Archives, and the State Museum, reversing what they had previously stated, have no information on Missouri having the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock concluding that it was presumed missing. The rock was later found amongst Bond's possessions by his staff and it was returned to the state.
North Carolina
Professor Christopher Brown, Director of the N.C. Space Grant and professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill turned the moon rock over, along with related items, to the North Carolina Museum of Natural SciencesNorth Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences is located in Raleigh, North Carolina. This museum is the oldest established museum in North Carolina and the largest museum of its kind in the Southeast...
where it is planned for permanent display in the fall of 2011 when the museum expansion is completed. Brown obtained the rock from a colleague in 2003 who found it in a desk drawer at the state Commerce Department. Brown's colleague received permission to lend the artifact to Brown who used it in presentations on space and space-related science to students over the next several years.
Oregon
Toni Dowdell, a graduate student at the University of Phoenix, was assigned the task of hunting down the OregonOregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
Apollo 11 Moon Rock while two of her teammates were charged with hunting down the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks of Oregon and Louisiana. Toni Dowdell and her two teammates received this assignment from her professor, a retired Senior Special Agent with NASA's Office of Inspector General. This assignment was part of an ongoing assignment known as the Moon Rock Project, where students are assigned the task of hunting down moon rocks all over America and the world. In a February 19, 2010 article Toni Dowdell wrote for the Daily News of Greenville Michigan, Dowdell described how her teammates in this investigation discerned that both the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks of Oregon and of Louisiana remain unaccounted for, but how she successfully tracked down her assigned moon rock, the Oregon Apollo 11 Moon Rock. As with many moon rock gifts the Nixon Administration gave to the states and the nations of the world the first problem she encountered was a lack of a document trail. However, by reaching out to people, to include an operator in the state Capitol, she found the moon rock hidden in the ceremonial Governor’s Office of Oregon.
West Virginia
Sandra Shelton, a graduate student at the University of Phoenix, was assigned the task of hunting down the West VirginiaWest Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock by her professor, a retired Senior Special Agent with NASA's Office of Inspector General. This moon rock was presented to West Virginia in 1974 and is valued at 5 million dollars. On May 16, 2010, Rick Steelhammer of the Gazette-Mail of Charleston, West Virginia wrote a front page story documenting Sandra Shelton's investigative findings which revealed that the West Virginia Goodwill Moon Rock was missing. Predicated on that news story retired dentist Robert Conner called Ms. Shelton and told her that he had the West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
Goodwill Moon Rock. Ms. Shelton informed her professor who advised the Governor's Office. Dr. Conner advised that his deceased brother was the former business partner of former West Virginia Governor Arch A. Moore, Jr.
Arch A. Moore, Jr.
Arch Alfred Moore, Jr. was the 28th and 30th Governor of West Virginia from 1969 until 1977 and from 1985 until 1989. He was a Congressman from 1957 until entering the governor's office. He is a member of the United States Republican Party. He ran for reelection in 1988, but was defeated by...
, and that Conner acquired the moon rock upon the death of his brother, from his brothers belongings. In her June 29 story appearing in the Denver Post reporter Sarah Horn wrote that "Shelton was honored by the state for her detective work.". Shelton was awarded a certificate by the Governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin, lll, for her role in recovering the West Virginia Goodwill Moon Rock.
Canada
In 1972, then 13 year old Jayme Matthews, Astronomy Professor at the University of British ColumbiaUniversity of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
, lied about his age in order to compete in an essay contest, the winner of which would serve as participate in a "10-day International Youth Science Tour, in which all the countries in the United Nations were invited to offer up "youth ambassadors" aged 17 to 21. These youth ambassadors were to witness first-hand the launch in Florida..." of Apollo 17…" Eighty countries accepted the invitation, including Canada. Matthews won the contest, and when his true age came out, Canadian officials decided to let him go anyway. As the student ambassador, it was decided that Canada's Goodwill Moon Rock was mailed to him where he kept it at his home. Eventually he was asked to turn the moon rock over to Canada, which he did. The rock was reportedly stolen in 1978, while on tour. In 2003, University of Phoenix graduate students tracked down the rock to a storage facility at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Canada. After 30 years of sitting in storage in the Canadian Museum of Nature the Canadian Goodwill Moon Rock finally went on display at the Canadian Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa Canada, on July 23, 2009.
Cyprus
The common belief was that both Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 moon rocks were presented to Cyprus and subsequently destroyed or stolen during the violence and terrorism that plagued that island nation in 1973 and 1974. This violence included the assassination of the American Ambassador to Cyprus, Rodger P. Davies, on August 19, 1974. In September 2009, while cooperating with a worldwide hunt for moon rocks with Associated PressAssociated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reporter Toby Sterling (Netherlands Bureau) and Cyprus Mail
Cyprus Mail
Cyprus Mail is an English language newspaper published in Cyprus. The newspaper is mostly read by foreign nationals and expatriates, particularly from the UK, in Cyprus. It is published daily , and a number of articles are available online...
reporter Lucy Millett, the daughter of the British Ambassador to Cyprus, Gutheinz was advised by his friend and space memorabilia expert Robert Pearlman (CollectSpace.com) that Pearlman had learned in 2003 that the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock was never presented to Cyprus, but retained by the son of an American diplomat. The American government was advised about this situation in 2003 and did nothing. Upon learning the truth Gutheinz reached out to both the American Embassy in Cyprus and the Cyprus Government to convey the facts; he then filed a request for a Congressional Inquiry into the case of the missing Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock. Subsequently, he caused the facts about the moon rock to be published in the press in order to motivate the person who had the moon rock to do the right thing, and return it.
The diplomat’s son thereafter began negotiating with NASA's Office of Inspector General, and did so for 5 months until the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock was recovered. The diplomat's son's name has never been disclosed.
Honduras
Uncovered during Operation Lunar Eclipse, Florida businessman Alan H. Rosen contacted agents to buy what turned out to be the Goodwill moon rock presented to HondurasHonduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
. Rosen offered the 1.142 gram rock to undercover Agents for 5 million dollars. After two months of negotiations with Rosen, this sting operation ended up in a Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
vault where the Moon rock was seized. The Moon rock was then subject to a 5 year civil case known as: "United States of America v. One Lucite Ball containing Lunar Material (one Moon Rock) and One Ten Inch by Fourteen Inch Wooden Plaque". This case resulted in the forfeiture of the Moon rock to the Federal Government on March 24, 2003.
After the Moon rock was officially handed back to the American Government it was sent back to Johnson Space Center where it was refurbished so that it could be once again presented to the people of Honduras, which happened on September 22, 2003 in a ceremony at NASA's Headquarters in Washington, D.C. where NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe
Sean O'Keefe
Sean O'Keefe is the CEO of EADS North America, a subsidiary of the European aerospace firm EADS, a former Administrator of NASA, and former chancellor of Louisiana State University . O'Keefe is also a former member of the board of directors of DuPont...
presented the Moon rock to Ambassador Mario M. Canahuati
Mario Canahuati
Mario Canahuati is a Honduran politician, businessman and a former Honduran ambassador to the United States. He is a former President of the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise ....
, of Honduras. Also in attendance at this ceremony was Joseph Gutheinz, the leader of the sting operation, who gave a first hand account of the sting operation to Ambassador Canahuati. Finally on February 28, 2004, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe
Sean O'Keefe
Sean O'Keefe is the CEO of EADS North America, a subsidiary of the European aerospace firm EADS, a former Administrator of NASA, and former chancellor of Louisiana State University . O'Keefe is also a former member of the board of directors of DuPont...
flew to Honduras where he formally presented the Moon rock to Honduran president Ricardo Maduro
Ricardo Maduro
Ricardo Rodolfo Maduro Joest is a former President of Honduras and Bank of Honduras chairman. Maduro graduated from The Lawrenceville School and later Stanford University...
. In 2007, Gutheinz, a past recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal
NASA Exceptional Service Medal
The NASA Exceptional Service Medal is an award granted to U.S. government employees for significant sustained performance characterized by unusual initiative or creative ability that clearly demonstrates substantial improvement in engineering, aeronautics, space flight, administration, support, or...
, was featured in the BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
documentary
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
Moon for Sale talking about the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock and this unique case. Today the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock is on display at the Centro Interactivo Chiminike, an education center in Tegucigalpa
Tegucigalpa
Tegucigalpa , and commonly referred as Tegus , is the capital of Honduras and seat of government of the Republic, along with its twin sister Comayagüela. Founded on September 29, 1578 by the Spanish, it became the country's capital on October 30, 1880 under President Marco Aurelio Soto...
that receives hundreds of young student visitors per day."
Ireland
The Irish Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock is located at the National Museum of IrelandNational Museum of Ireland
The National Museum of Ireland is the national museum in Ireland. It has three branches in Dublin and one in County Mayo, with a strong emphasis on Irish art, culture and natural history.-Archaeology:...
. The Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was given to Irish President Erskine Childers
Erskine Hamilton Childers
Erskine Hamilton Childers served as the fourth President of Ireland from 1973 until his death in 1974. He was a Teachta Dála from 1938 until 1973...
who later died in office. When the widow of President Childers, Rita Dudley Childers, requested the rock as a keepsake of her late husband, this very popular first lady’s request was denied, as the Irish Government reasoned the Irish Goodwill Moon Rock belonged to the people of Ireland and not just one individual.
New York
In an October 23, 1999 story entitled "Atlanta Man Admits Trying to Sell Bogus Moon Rock", ReutersReuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
reported two brothers, Ronald and Brian Trochelmann, who were previously charged in 1998 in "U.S. District Court in Manhattan…"for…"a scheme to sell a phony moon rock for millions of dollars," both plead guilty to wire fraud, a felony, for perpetrating that scheme. "The brothers claimed that their father had invented a space-food packaging process that was used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s. The Trochelmann’s alleged that the rock had been brought from the moon by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean
Alan Bean
Alan LaVern Bean is a former NASA astronaut, engineer, and painter. Bean was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1963 as part of Astronaut Group 3. He made his first flight into space aboard Apollo 12, the second manned mission to land on the Moon, at the age of thirty-seven years in...
and given to John Glenn
John Glenn
John Herschel Glenn, Jr. is a former United States Marine Corps pilot, astronaut, and United States senator who was the first American to orbit the Earth and the third American in space. Glenn was a Marine Corps fighter pilot before joining NASA's Mercury program as a member of NASA's original...
. They claimed Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth and later a U.S. senator, had given the rock to their father in recognition of his supposed invention." …" The brothers had negotiated a consignment agreement with Phillips Son & Neale, a Manhattan auction house, to sell the rock in December 1995. However, before the auction took place, the rock was confiscated by FBI agents in December 1995 prior to the scheduled auction." This story first broke in a New York Times Article written by Lawrence Van Gelder
Lawrence Van Gelder
Lawrence Van Gelder is an American journalist and instructor in journalism who has worked at several different New York City-based newspapers in his long career. Until 2010 he was senior editor of the Arts and Leisure weekly section of The New York Times...
on December 2, 1995. At that time NASA expressed the belief that the moon rock might have been real as it matched the general description of a moon rock that was stolen in 1970. "Eileen Hawley, a spokeswoman for NASA, said of the sample offered through Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers and Appraisers: We have a rock that is classified as lost, an Apollo 12 lunar sample of approximately the same weight. With that information, we need to look at this—that this might be a true lunar sample. Ms. Hawley said a rock sample collected during the Apollo 12 mission had been part of a shipment of registered and certified mail that was stolen while en route to a researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1970. The space agency received a call on Thursday from the Postal Investigative Service in New York, she said, after articles about the impending auction had been published. The service passed along a tip from the retired inspector, who was not identified, about a possible connection between the theft and the rock to be auctioned." This scheme and schemes like it were the inspiration for the undercover sting operation known as Operation Lunar Eclipse, which resulted in the acquisition of the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock in December 1998.
Door-to-door salesman
In his November 4, 1969 article appearing in the Fort Scott Tribune entitled "Fake Lunar Rock Racket Feared" NEA Staff correspondent Tom Tiede first predicted a market for fake moon rocks, a market subsequently given extra momentum as moon rocks began to be reported lost and stolen. Tiede gave a few examples to support his prediction. "In Miami Florida a housewife had been approached by a door to door salesman dealing in lunar rocks. She bought five dollars worth." "In Redwood City, Calif., a woman"… published an advertisement… "announcing moon dust for sale. At $1.98 an ounce." " In New York, the Harlem Better Business Bureau" ….was…. "cautioning consumers against purchasing any kind of obviously fake moon substances."Dutch moon rock proven fake
In his August 28, 2009 Associated Press story appearing in the Brisbane TimesBrisbane Times
Brisbane Times is an Internet-based news site for Brisbane and Queensland, Australia. It was launched on 7 March 2007 by then-Queensland Premier Peter Beattie....
, Toby Sterling recounted how a spokesman for the Dutch National Museum, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, acknowledged on August 26, 2009, "that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by"…Apollo 11… "US astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.."… "The museum acquired the rock after the death of former prime minister Willem Drees
Willem Drees
Willem Drees was a Dutch politician of the Labour Party . He served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from August 7, 1948 until December 22, 1958....
in 1988. Drees received it as a private gift on October 9, 1969 from then-US ambassador J. William Middendorf
J. William Middendorf
John William Middendorf II was a Republican United States diplomat.-Biography:Middendorf received a Bachelor of Naval Science from College of the Holy Cross in 1945. He served in the Navy just at the end of World War II as engineer officer and navigator of USS LCS 53, being mustered out in 1946...
during a visit by the three Apollo 11 astronauts, part of their ‘Giant Leap’ goodwill tour after the first moon landing." The museum acknowledged that though they did vet the moon rock they failed to double check it. The museum was under the incorrect belief that this moon rock was one of the 135 Apollo 11 moon rocks that were presented to the nations of the world by the Nixon Administration. "It's a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone," said Frank Beunk, a geologist involved in the investigation.
Theft of NASA rocks
In June 2002, 101 grams of moon rocks were stolen from the Johnson Space CenterLyndon B. Johnson Space Center
The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's center for human spaceflight training, research and flight control. The center consists of a complex of 100 buildings constructed on 1,620 acres in Houston, Texas, USA...
by interns Thad Roberts and Tiffany Fowler. The pair used knowledge of the security around the rocks gained during their internship to remove a safe containing the samples.Roberts is a certified pilot and scuba diver who was an ambitious student pursuing degrees in Physics, Geology and Anthropology who aspired to be an astronaut. Fellow intern Shae Saur and accomplice Gordon McWhorter were also later arrested for their role in the theft and attempted sale of the rocks.The theft also included a meteorite that may have revealed information about life on Mars.
Roberts advertised the rocks to a Belgian mineralogy club website which was forwarded to the FBI who, with the help of Belgian amateur astronomer Axel Emmermann, set up a sting in Orlando, Florida in July 2002 where Roberts and Fowler were arrested. Roberts was also charged with stealing Dinosaur bones and other fossils from his school, the University of Utah
University of Utah
The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
.
The theft was the subject of the 2011 book "Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History
Sex on the Moon
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History is a non-fiction book by Ben Mezrich, author of New York Times Best Seller Bringing Down the House and of The Accidental Billionaires. It describes the theft and attempted sale of lunar samples plus a Martian meteorite...
."
National Air and Space Museum
In an Aviation and Space Technology article published on September 27, 1976 entitled "Lunar Sample Damaged by Vandals" the author addresses a vandalism and possible theft attempt against a 40 gram Apollo 17 moon rock. The author states that the "Apollo 17Apollo 17
Apollo 17 was the eleventh and final manned mission in the American Apollo space program. Launched at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972, with a three-member crew consisting of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 remains the...
lunar sample on open display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum
National Air and Space Museum
The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution holds the largest collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft in the world. It was established in 1976. Located in Washington, D.C., United States, it is a center for research into the history and science of aviation and...
was slightly damaged…during an apparent vandalism attempt. It is possible that theft was the object of the attack on the sample, but both museum and National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials believe vandalism was the primary objective. About 2 cubic millimeters of the triangular fine-grained basalt were chipped away during the incident that involved a hard blow to the sample with a sharp object. NASA believes no part of the sample was obtained by the vandal. The area around the sample's display case was swept immediately after the incident, and the sweeper bag is now at the Johnson Space Center, where it is being sifted in an attempt to obtain the missing material."
The author stated that "The 40-gram sample on display is the first touchable moon rock. Museum visitors are able to feel directly the texture of the lunar material, a departure from strict NASA policy that dictates that no individual ever handle lunar samples directly as a guard against contamination. "
Memphis, Tennessee
In an August 8, 1986 article written by United Press InternationalUnited Press International
United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...
entitled "Police Look for Stolen Moon Rocks" the author wrote the following: "Memphis police are looking for some moon rocks taken from a NASA van that was stolen." The van was assigned to Louis Marshall of Memphis, who conducts education programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The van was stolen from outside his home Tuesday night, driven to a field and set afire, police said Friday. A space suit in the van was left to burn. But thieves took some lunar rock and soil specimens, police said. Marshall said it was hard to put a value on them. It's stuff that belongs to all of us,' he said.' I'm out of business right now,' said Marshall. It will take a while to replace the items, he said. NASA officials said that out of 384 kilograms (846.6 lb) of moon rock retrieved through the years, the sample was not a big loss. I don't know what value it would be except just to gloat over it personally,' said NASA spokesman Terry White about the theft. White said theft is not a common problem with the NASA exhibits, which are shown to schools around the country.’ I’d always thought, Who's going to mess with a big red van with NASA on it?' Marshall said." There is no indication that this theft was related to a moon rock theft that followed just a few days later in Louisiana.