Lost treasures: President Nixon's moon rocks

 

(Image: Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

Priceless lunar samples gifted after the Apollo landings fell into wrong hands – meet the moon-hunter who went undercover to get them back

By weight, the moon rocks collected during the Apollo missions are worth far more than diamonds, and in any case, they have a priceless historical value. They are relics of humanity's greatest adventure to date.

Not all are properly accounted for, however. That's why Joseph Gutheinz, a former NASA investigator, has spent much of his career tracing moon rocks that have gone missing: he's even staged elaborate stings to lure would-be illegal sellers. And there's one particular group of moon rocks that Gutheinz is keen to recover.

The Apollo samples add up to about 382 kilograms. The vast majority are stored in a pristine high-security NASA vault in Houston, Texas. But after the first landing by Apollo 11 in 1969, US president Richard Nixon presented lunar dust embedded on plaques to 135 nations, US states, and territories. In 1972, Nixon presented another round of plaques, each with a fragment collected by the crew of Apollo 17. NASA considered each sample the property of the people of the nations and states to which it was given - but many plaques were stolen or lost (see map).

Gutheinz first learned that these plaques might not be in their rightful places as an investigator in NASA's Office of Inspector General. He had been looking into complaints about attempted sales of bogus lunar rocks and dust, so he decided to go undercover. The effort was called Operation Lunar Eclipse. Using the alias John's Estate Sales, Gutheinz placed an advert in USA Today. "Moon Rocks Wanted," it read.

Gutheinz received a call from someone offering the Apollo 17 plaque given to Honduras. He settled on a price of $5 million dollars and asked the seller, Alan Rosen, to leave it in a bank vault in Miami, Florida. Once there, Gutheinz and NASA agents seized it. In 2003, the plaque was returned to the Honduran government.

Gutheinz now teaches law, and has incorporated the moon rock mystery into his course on investigations, setting students loose to trace the remaining lost plaques. Gutheinz and his students have located 77, but nearly 160 are still missing.

Some, like the rock gifted to Malta, were stolen from museums. Others were taken by politicians. The Romanian plaque, for example, was auctioned off from the estate of executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Gutheinz suspects that many people who acquired the rocks underestimated their rarity, and so some have turned up in inglorious places. One of them, West Virginia's, had been sitting in a box in the garage of a retired dentist.

The strangest case of Gutheinz's career, however, is the one he is investigating at the moment. Coleman Anderson, a one-time fishing boat captain on the reality TV series Deadliest Catch, is suing the state of Alaska for title to its Apollo 11 plaque. Anderson claims he salvaged the plaque after a fire at the museum where it was displayed 37 years ago. The curator of the Alaska state museum has asked Gutheinz for advice on how to get the plaque back.

Gutheinz says the plaques are too precious to be in private hands, but accepts that many may be beyond his reach. "I think we'll get a lot back, but we're never going to get 100 per cent," he says.

 http://www.newscientist.com/