Lunar dust collected by Neil Armstrong on first mission to Moon comes to auction

The Bonhams Space History sale will present lunar dust collected by American astronaut Neil Armstrong from the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 on April 13 in New York. Photo: AFP

Bonhams is set to auction a part of space history on April 13, when Moon dust collected by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission goes under the hammer. This exceptional lot could sell for a seven-figure sum.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon in front of hundreds of millions of television viewers. He was quickly joined by his colleague, Buzz Aldrin. For two hours, the two astronauts explored Earth's natural satellite to take pictures, deploy certain scientific instruments and collect rock and soil samples. Among them, Moon dust.

This space relic is now set to go under the hammer at Bonhams, as part of the auction house's "Space History" sale in New York. The lot offered for sale is composed of five Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) aluminum sample stubs, each topped with approximately 10mm diameter carbon tape containing Apollo Moon dust.

The bag containing these samples was lost by NASA after the Apollo 11 mission. It ended up in the possession of Max Ary, the former director of the Kansas Cosmosphere museum in Hutchinson.

It was seized and put up for auction by US authorities after Ary was convicted of illegally selling items from the museum's collection. It was then sold to an American woman named Nancy Lee Carlson for less than US$1,000 (RM4,210). According to the Wall Street Journal, the 62-year-old sent the bag and the samples of lunar dust it contained to NASA to determine its origin. When the space agency realised that it came from the Apollo 11 mission, it tried, in vain, to seize the property.

The bag taken to the Moon by Neil Armstrong was sold at Sotheby's for US$1.8mil (RM7.6mil) in 2017. Rival auction house, Bonhams, estimates that the lunar dust samples it contained could, for their part, fetch between US$800,000 (RM3.4mil) and US$1.2mil (RM5mil).

"Everyone can envision the footage of Armstrong taking those first steps on the moon. It was a pivotal moment in history when people all over the world rejoiced at one of the greatest achievements of humankind," Adam Stackhouse, fine books and manuscripts specialist at Bonhams, said in a statement.

"Humans had landed on the moon - and brought a small piece back to Earth with them." - AFP