Nasa prevents auction of moon dust and cockroaches

An auction organized by RR Auction was simply canceled at NASA's request.

The reason ?

A collector had decided to put up for sale a small vial of Moon dust, extracted from the corpses of several cockroaches, reports an

article relayed by

.

However, the American space agency insisted on recalling that these elements belonged to it.

Moon dust eaten by cockroaches

This Moon dust was brought back in 1969 by the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission. Once repatriated to Earth, this dust had been fed to cockroaches, in order to study possible physiological effects on these small insects .

An entomologist was then commissioned by NASA to collect the dust, by dissecting the corpses of these cockroaches.

But she had obviously not returned the moon dust or the cockroaches to the American space agency.

NASA canceled the auction

Thus, a collector found himself in possession of these elements and he decided to put them up for auction for an estimated amount of 400,000 dollars, or approximately 380,000 euros.

When NASA heard of this maneuver, it asked for the sale to be cancelled.

“All Apollo samples, as stipulated in this collection of articles, belong to NASA and no person, university or other entity has ever been authorized to retain them after analysis, destruction or other use for any purpose. either, especially for sale,” Nasa explained in a letter.

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