NASA accidentally sold a priceless -Apollo 11 artefact, and currently they want it back

NASA and federal prosecutors are attempting to improve the bag used by Apollo 11 astronauts to save Moon samples back in 1969 that they accidentally sold at an auction previous year.

Officials say the bag was sold due to a priestly error that marked two lunar bags, one from Apollo 17 and the other from Apollo 11, with the same list number - an error that was brought to their attention when the latest owner of the Apollo 11 bag sent it back to NASA for verification.
NASA decided to keep it, and right currently, the US space agency and federal prosecutors are work together to make sure the bag – which they're calling a "national treasure" – stays at NASA. But the present owner – Nancy Carlson from Illinois – claims that she bought it fair and square, which means a permissible battle is now taking shape.

The funny thing is that this isn’t the 1st time the Apollo 11 lunar bag has been the topic of controversy. Back in 2005, Max Ary – the founder and manager of the Kansas Cosmophere and Space Centre – was establish guilty of stealing and auctioning off space artefacts that NASA had loaned his institution for display purposes.

During Ary’s study two years earlier, NASA officials found the Apollo 11 lunar bag inside his garage the length of with a lot of other artefacts that he was planning to sell.

Now, NASA hopes to talk with the same federal judge that helped them improve the bag from Ary to get it back from Carlson, who bought it previous year for US$995.

Since Carlson actually did buy the bag from a real government auction and didn’t commit any sort of crime, she has in progress her own lawsuit next to NASA to give it back.

Given the priceless nature of the bag and the detail that it still has lunar debris embedded inside it, NASA is hoping that the federal judge will allow them to refund Carlson’s cash and keep it at NASA, where they will hopefully keep a improved eye on it, because how many times can one organisation lose the same bag?

It seems weird, but space artifacts are pretty notorious for itinerant off. Last year, Neil Armstrong’s widow Carol establish a white bag inside her late husband’s closet that was filled with Apollo artefacts, counting the camera used on the lunar surface to capture Armstrong taking his 1st steps, and saying the famous "One small step for man" line.

Armstrong was imaginary to leave those artifacts inside the lunar module, which remains on the Moon, but instead, he and his fellow astronauts bring back keepsakes from the mission, saying they were trash.

Two months after officials were alert of Armstrong’s secret stash, another artefact turned up when a scrap dealer in Tennessee establish a missing lunar rover prototype known as the Brown Engineering Local Scientific Survey Module (Brown LSSM), which NASA sold 50 years ago and gone track of.

It’s hard to say what will come of the present case between NASA and Carlson, though it all lies with the federal judge, who has by now helped the space agency out once before. Only time will tell, but if this news should teach us something, it’s that there are space artefacts all over the place if we stay our eyes open.