For sale: The bag used by Neil Armstrong to collect moon dust

Moon dust collected by Neil Armstrong to go under the hammer
Moon dust collected by Neil Armstrong up for auction
Author

15 July, 2017

Sotheby's, which is hosting the auction, estimates the sample bag, which was used by Neil Armstrong to collect soil samples on the Apollo 11 mission and still contains moon dust and small rocks, will sell for between $2 million and $4 million.

It might be the most expensive piece of used luggage in history.

Armstrong collected roughly 500 grams of moon dust and 12 rock fragments in 1969 as he walked through an area known as The Sea of Tranquility.

An inventory error however left the sample bag languishing in a box at the Johnson Space Center. The museum manager was then convicted of the bag's theft.

In 2015, the bag was sold to a Chicago attorney for merely $995.

During the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong collected almost 500 grams of material finer than one centimetre.

The owner sent the bag to NASA, which identified the bag as the one used by Armstrong.

During the mission, Armstrong collected almost 500 grams of material and 12 rock fragments from a part of the lunar surface known as the Sea of Tranquility.

The bag is expected to fetch between $2 million and $4 million at auction.

Apollo 13 was supposed to be the third U.S. moon landing attempt.

Other items on the auction block are Armstrong's snapshot of fellow Apollo 11 astronaut "Buzz" Aldrin standing on the moon, with an estimated value of $3,000 to $5,000.

They're just some of the items linked to space travel that Sotheby's is auctioning off to mark the 48th anniversary of the first lunar landing on July 20.

A Snoopy astronaut doll that was used as the mascot for Apollo 10 is also now estimated pre-sale at $2,000 to $3,000. Yuri Gagarin is the Russian astronaut who is actually the very first human to orbit the Earth in 1961.


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