"[76] This story first broke in a New York Times Article written by Lawrence Van Gelder on December 2, 1995. About two cubic millimeters of the triangular fine-grained basalt were chipped away during the incident that involved a hard blow to the sample with a sharp object. The Trochelmanns alleged that the rock had been brought from the moon by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean and given to John Glenn. If the object is solid, we may be able to hit it before it hits us by using a projectile with enough mass to knock the object away from Earth. [9][10] The Apollo 17 Goodwill Rock remains with the National Museum of Ireland. As with many Moon rock gifts the Nixon Administration gave to the states and the nations of the world the first problem she encountered was a lack of a document trail. With that information, we need to look at thisthat this might be a true lunar sample. [23][24][25] Students assigned to the Moon Rock Project are currently[when?] [82] "It's a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone," said Frank Beunk, a geologist involved in the investigation. 19 energy - Firefly fern, gives 3 fireflies and 2 XP, 27 energy - Firefly bush, gives 4 fireflies and 2 XP, 24 energy - Amethyst rock, gives 2 amethyst, 1 XP, Seastar - 0-2 energy, 0-1 salt or seashell, 1-2 XP, Wooden chest (need 1 key) - 1 pickaxe, 1 Saw, 2 shovels, 8 Xp, 30 energy, 1 Seashell, 3 Salt, Sand castle (1 shovel) - 2-3 shells, 1 salt, 15-35 energy, 15 XP, Dead tree (5 saws) - 22 logs, sticks / remaining Tree Stump (2 shovels) - 15 logs, 1 resin. As they migrated to their present positions,smaller bodies were thrown into disarray and became impactors. [11] Joseph Gutheinz, a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Special Agent who heads up a "Moon Rock Project" at the University of Phoenix (where he assigns his students the task of hunting down missing Moon rocks), urged the Maltese authorities to grant an amnesty period to the thieves.
She bought five dollars worth;" "In Redwood City, Calif., a woman [published an advertisement] announcing Moon dust for sale. Eventually he was asked to turn the Moon rock over to Canada, which he did. Then Senator Kit Bond, who was the Governor of Missouri when the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was gifted to the state, stated that he has no recollection of receiving a Moon rock and the Missouri State Archives, and the State Museum, reversing what they had previously stated, had no information on Missouri having the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock concluding that it was presumed missing.
At that time NASA expressed the belief that the Moon rock might have been real as it matched the general description of a Moon rock that was stolen in 1970. The American government was advised about this situation in 2003 and did nothing. Facial coverings and timed-entry ticket reservations continue to be required for Museum entry. [57], Since their return to public hands, the lunar sample displays remained in secured storage within the Bogot Planetarium until 2003 when they were displayed for the first time to the public as part of the planetarium's permanent collection. This moon rock was presented to West Virginia in 1974 and is valued at $5 million. Its whereabouts remained unknown until September 21, 2011, when it was discovered by Michael Hodge, an archivist with the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, while processing the gubernatorial papers of Bill Clinton. [72], In April 2013, Karen Nelson, an archivist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found 20 vials of Moon dust from the Apollo 11 mission with handwritten labels dated "24 July 1970" in a warehouse at the Berkeley lab. This period lasted millions of years or longer, but the craters no longer survive on Earth. "[70][71] The Apollo 11 Moon Rock was returned to the people of Nicaragua in November 2012. In the young Solar System, unfinished planetesimals, asteroids and comets were in unstable orbits and prone to collision. [35][36], Flaws in the State of Hawaii inventory control system were highlighted in 2009 when an estimated $10 million in Moon rocks from Apollo 11 and the Apollo 17 Goodwill Rock could not be located. [39] The state's Apollo 11 moon rock is in the collection of the Louisiana Art and Science Museum. Matthews won the contest, and when his true age came out, Canadian officials decided to let him go anyway. In 2015, NASAsMESSENGERprobe crashed into Mercurys surface at 14,000 kilometers (8,750 miles) per hourbut this was no accident. On February 28, 2004, O'Keefe flew to Honduras to formally present the Moon rock to Honduran president Ricardo Maduro. In 1973, there was a massive fire at the Alaska Transportation Museum where the Moon rocks were being housed.
Originally two undercover agents were involved in this sting, Senior Special Agent Joseph Gutheinz of NASA's Office of Inspector General (NASA OIG), posing as Tony Coriasso, and Inspector Bob Cregger of the United States Postal Inspection Service, posing as John Marta. [78][79], In his November 4, 1969 article appearing in the Fort Scott Tribune entitled "Fake Lunar Rock Racket Feared" NEA Staff correspondent Tom Tiede first predicted a market for fake Moon rocks, a market subsequently given extra momentum as Moon rocks began to be reported lost and stolen. [84], In June 2002, 101grams of Moon rocks were stolen from the Johnson Space Center by interns Thad Roberts and Tiffany Fowler. Shelton informed her professor, who advised the Governor's Office. Juregui relates the following from Franco's grandson: "The grandson of Franco stressed that neither he nor any other member of his family" had been told "that there might be some legal or ethical problem" regarding the Moon rock. Brown's colleague received permission to lend the artifact to Brown who used it in presentations on space and space-related science to students over the next several years. SeeHealth and Safety. [62] The rock was refurbished at Johnson Space Center, to be once again presented to the people of Honduras. [30], The missing Moon rocks were returned by Anderson as of December 7, 2012. [43][44], Professor Christopher Brown, Director of the N.C. Space Grant and professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill turned the Moon rock over, along with related items, to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences where it is planned for permanent display in the Fall of 2011 when the museum expansion is completed.
The Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was given to Irish President Erskine Childers who later died in office. White said theft is not a common problem with the NASA exhibits, which are shown to schools around the country. Id always thought, Who's going to mess with a big red van with NASA on it?' The surfaces of Mars, Mercury and some moons of outer planets also show evidence of this tempestuous time. After looking at the sample through a microscope and later examining documents given him by Navarro, Gutheinz is skeptical of Navarro's claim, stating "this is a train wreck waiting to happen for him, and he's inviting it. [89] All three were arrested, and the samples were recovered. In an Aviation Week & Space Technology article published on September 27, 1976, entitled "Lunar Sample Damaged by Vandals" the author addresses a vandalism and possible theft attempt against a 40gram Apollo 17 Moon rock. Summary of lunar material samples stolen or misplaced, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, "In Search of the Goodwill Moon Rocks: A Personal Account", "NASA Searches for Loot That Traveled from Space to Another Void", "A Few Lunaroids: One man's quest for pieces of the moon gifted by US to govts across the world", "Trenton, we have a problem: NJ's souvenir moon rocks missing since 1970s", "Misplaced from Space: Every Nation Received a Moon Rock, Some Can't Find It", "Houston we have a problem: we didn't give Cyprus its moon rock", "Professor teaches how to track moon rocks", "Ex-NASA officer urges Malta amnesty to repossess moon rocks", "Malta's Moon Rock Not Among the 79 Recovered", "Romania's Revolution of 1989: An Enduring Enigma", French list of terrorist organizations, in the annex of ChapterXIV, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2011:028:0057:01:EN:HTML, "Franco's grandson: My mother lost the moonstone that was given to her by grandfather", "El hijo de Carrero Blanco don otra roca al Museo Naval", "El misterio de la roca lunar que EEUU regal a Espaa", "Apollo moon rocks lost in space? The Apollo 11 rock presented to Ireland was accidentally discarded in a landfill known as the Dunsink Landfill in October 1977 following a fire that consumed the Meridian room library at the Dublin Dunsink Observatory where the rock was displayed. [63][64][65][66][67][68] Today the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock is on display at the Centro Interactivo Chiminike, an education center in Tegucigalpa that receives hundreds of young student visitors per day. Testimony given therein is at odds with some of the key claims made in Mezrich's account.
[86] Fellow interns Shae Saur and Tiffany Fowler, as well as accomplice Gordon McWhorter were also arrested for their roles in the theft and attempted sale of the rocks. Axel Emmermann, Gordon McWhorter, NASA Principal Investigator Dr. Everett Gibson and investigating officers of the FBI and NASA Office of the Inspector General were interviewed on camera for a National Geographic Channels Explorer special called "Million Dollar Moon Rock Heist", first broadcast in the US on March 4, 2012. Using these benchmarks, scientists can evaluate the relative ages of these surfaces without ever landing a spacecraft. On January 10, 2006, Rudo Kashiri, an education specialist employed by NASA, reported that someone broke into a van that was parked in the driveway of her home in Virginia Beach, Virginia and made off with a collection of NASA Moon rocks. He subsequently extended this project to also cover the missing Apollo 11 Moon rocks President Nixon gave to the states and nations of the world in 1969. [88], Roberts advertised the rocks on a Belgian mineralogy club website which was forwarded to the FBI who, with the help of Belgian amateur rock collector Axel Emmermann, set up a sting. On Mars, impact craters are a key focus in the hunt for the planets warmer, wetter past. This sting operation was later expanded to include Agents from the United States Customs Service, namely, Special Agent Dwight Weikel and Special Agent Dave Atwood. [96][97] These Moon rocks have not been recovered. Beginning in 2002, his graduate students began reporting to him that both the Cyprus Apollo 11 Moon rock (which is actually a collection of lunar dust in a Lucite ball) and Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock (a pebble-size Moon rock) were missing. The Agents were targeting individuals selling bogus Moon rocks, which con artists sell to the elderly and to space enthusiasts. "[69], The Irish Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock is located at the National Museum of Ireland. I'm out of business right now,' said Marshall. The freshly exposed soil ofthe crater is now changing through irradiation and more impacts, processes known asspace weathering. [31], In a front-page story, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette listed numerous sources suggesting the Arkansas Goodwill Moon Rock had gone missing noting that the rock was potentially worth five million dollars. A set of six fragments of Moon rocks used in educational programs were stolen from the Louisiana Science and Nature Center by ripping a small safe out of a wall. The museum acknowledged that though they did vet the Moon rock they failed to double check it. The van was stolen from outside his home Tuesday night, driven to a field and set afire, police said Friday.
Determining the age of CAIs, Resources For Educators: Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites. Cleo Luff, a student from the University of Phoenix, obtained this information after her investigation into the moon rock's location for a class she had with Professor Joseph Gutheinz. [46], Toni Dowdell, a graduate student at the University of Phoenix, was assigned the task of hunting down the Oregon Apollo 11 Moon Rock while two of her teammates were charged with hunting down the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks of Oregon and Louisiana. Anderson, who was a child at the time, claimed to have found the Moon rocks and cleaned them up over the next few years. The only attendant is the ticket-seller" "A Maltese flag displayed next to the rock which the U.S. astronauts had taken up with them was not taken". "Eileen Hawley, a spokeswoman for NASA, said of the sample offered through Phillips & Neale: We have a rock that is classified as lost, an Apollo 12 lunar sample of approximately the same weight. [40] Photos in news stories about the location of the rock were later identified as coming from Apollo 11. The Apollo lunar missions opened our eyes to the changing rate of impacts throughout the history of the Solar System. Of the 270 Apollo 11 Moon rocks and the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks that were given to the nations of the world by the Nixon Administration, approximately 180 are unaccounted for. After 30 years of sitting in storage, the Canadian Goodwill Moon Rock finally went on display at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, on July 23, 2009. Also in attendance at this ceremony was Joseph Gutheinz, the leader of the sting operation, who gave a first hand account of the rock's recovery to Ambassador Canahuati. Subsequently, he caused the facts about the Moon rock to be published in the press in order to motivate the person who had the Moon rock to do the right thing, and return it. Curators and officials at every museum and university in the state, along with then Governor Linda Lingles office, capitol, and state archives, were contacted but none knew of the whereabouts of the items. Pablo Juregui, the Science Editor of El Mundo, a Spanish newspaper, disclosed in a July 20, 2009 story entitled: "Franco's grandson: My mother lost the lunar rock that was given to my grandfather." [49] Following that story, retired dentist Robert Conner called Shelton and told her that he had the West Virginia Goodwill Moon Rock. [55], It was not until 1985 when journalist Daniel Samper Pizano, in search of the thought to be missing lunar displays, embarked on a mission that included contacting the Embassy of the United States in Bogot that confirmed that the displays were in fact not a personal gift to the then President Pastrana but rather to all people of Colombia. Agents posted a quarter page advertisement in USA Today asking for Moon rocks. "[77] This scheme and schemes like it were the inspiration for the undercover sting operation known as Operation Lunar Eclipse, which resulted in the acquisition of the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock in December 1998. The area around the sample's display case was swept immediately after the incident, and the sweeper bag is now at the Johnson Space Center, where it is being sifted in an attempt to obtain the missing material.
Malta's Goodwill Moon Rock has not been recovered and continues to be actively pursued. [54], Misael Pastrana Borrero, as President of Colombia between 1970 and 1974, received from United States President Richard Nixon both lunar sample displays that he kept on his desk at the Casa de Nario. The space agency received a call on Thursday from the Postal Investigative Service in New York, she said, after articles about the impending auction had been published.
In order to recover this Moon rock, the agents had to come up with the $5 million requested by the seller. Layered sediments in the rims of craters bolster the evidence that Mars not only had flowing water, but a complex water cycle. [41][42] The rock was later found among Bond's possessions by his staff and it was returned to the state. [45] Brown obtained the rock from a colleague in 2003 who found it in a desk drawer at the state Commerce Department. It will take a while to replace the items, he said. When the widow of President Childers, Rita Dudley Childers, requested the rock as a keepsake of her late husband, the request was denied, as the Irish Government reasoned the Irish Goodwill Moon Rock belonged to the people of Ireland and not just to one individual. The diplomat's son's name has never been disclosed. [7], In his June 26, 2011 Op/Ed appearing in the Cyprus Mail entitled "Houston we have a problem: we didn't give Cyprus its moon rock", Joseph Gutheinz revealed that after NASA recovered the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock over a year ago they failed to give the Moon rock to its legal owner, the nation of Cyprus.[8]. In 2007, Gutheinz, a past recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, was featured in the BBC Two documentary Moon for Sale talking about the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock and this unique case. [87] Roberts was also charged with stealing dinosaur bones and other fossils from the University of Utah, which he attended.[90][91][92]. [citation needed], AP reporter Ken Ritter wrote that the Nicaragua Apollo 11 Moon Rock "given by then-President Richard Nixon to former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia [had] been pilfered by a Costa Rican mercenary soldier-turned Contra rebel, traded to a Baptist missionary for unknown items, then sold to a Las Vegas casino mogul who displayed them at his Moon Rock Cafe before squirreling them away in a safety deposit box.
Other options include painting half of the object white, relying on the change in sunlight reflecting off the lightened surface to shift it off-course, or using a laser to blast dust or rock off the asteroid, changing its mass and, therefore, its orbit. The rocks were in a safe that was bolted to the van.
Ms. Hawley said a rock sample collected during the Apollo 12 mission had been part of a shipment of registered and certified mail that was stolen while en route to a researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1970. Hundreds of graduate students have participated in this project from 2002 to the present and while many Moon rocks have been found, others are now known to be missing, stolen, or destroyed. Click on a resource to get more info about it. But with more warning, we should be able to deflect a doomsday rock. Mercurys surface is unusually darkand until flyovers by theMESSENGERprobe, no one knew why. How would we go about protecting ourselves from a catastrophic impact? [26], Elizabeth Riker[27] was assigned the task of hunting down the Alaska Apollo 11 Moon Rock by her professor. At the moment, however,humanity continues watching, finding and studying the massive objects streaking through space. "[94] There is no indication that this theft was related to a Moon rock theft that followed just a few days later in Louisiana. [14] Both Nicolae Ceauescu and his wife, Elena Ceauescu, were executed by firing squad on December 25, 1989, for the crime of genocide. Many of these rocks that are accounted for have been locked away in storage for decades. Allegedly believing that the displays were a personal gift, Pastrana kept the moon rocks after the end of his presidential term as interior decoration in the living room of his private house in Bogot, Colombia. The Apollo 11 sample is on display in the New Jersey State Museum. Here is a list of the Natural resources you can find on the islands. Sometimes, the best way to study impact craters is to make one. Marshall said it was hard to put a value on them.
[7], During "Lunar Eclipse", Florida businessman Alan H. Rosen, attempted to sell agents the 1.142gram Goodwill Moon rock presented to Honduras for 5 million dollars. Museum visitors are able to feel directly the texture of the lunar material, a departure from strict NASA policy that dictates that no individual ever handle lunar samples directly as a guard against contamination.
[56] Having received this information, Samper published an article with the allegation that Pastrana had stolen the lunar displays prompting Juan Carlos Pastrana, son of Misael Pastrana Borrero, to pass the displays to the Bogot Planetarium. Infrared spectrometry showed dark, carbon-rich rock in and around impact craters. [47] According to moon rocks researcher Robert Pearlman, the Oregon Apollo 17 rock display is on permanent exhibit in the Earth Science Hall of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland.
The next probe to survey Mercury will gather information about the new crater, giving scientists insight into how these processes change Mercurys surface. On August 18, 2010, in a story she wrote about her investigation in the Capital City Weekly newspaper, of Juneau Alaska, she stated that after conducting a thorough investigation for Alaska's Apollo 11 Moon Rock she has concluded that it is missing. In September 2009, while cooperating with a worldwide hunt for Moon rocks with Associated Press reporter Toby Sterling (Netherlands Bureau) and Cyprus Mail reporter Lucy Millett, the daughter of the British Ambassador to Cyprus, Gutheinz was advised by his friend and space memorabilia expert Robert Pearlman who had learned in 2003 that the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock was never presented to Cyprus, but retained by the son of an American diplomat.