The Search For Missing Moon Rocks

Have moon rocks gone missing? Recently the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam announced that a rock it thought was a moon rock turned out to be petrified wood raising questions of how moon rocks are accounted for. During the Apollo 11 and 17 flights to the moon rocks were collected by the astronauts. The AP reports that around 270 rocks were given to foreign countries by the Nixon administration and that the fate of some of those rocks may be unknown. The article quotes Joseph Gutheinz, a University of Arizona instructor who says that he believes that some of the gifted rocks have been lost or stolen and are now secreted in private collections. Moon rocks aren't of particular value in mineral terms but their rarity and the obvious difficulty in attaining them has made them precious. A website called CollectSpace.com is working on compiling a list of where the stones are.

The AP report seems to indicate that many stones given to embassies made it into national museums but others may have gone missing long ago. Of an estimated 134 rocks brought back in the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 only around a dozen can be immediately located.NASA turned over the samples to the State Department to distribute and there is, according to the State Department historian, no record of what became of the rocks. At the time when the rocks were distributed no one imagined that it would be the last trip to the moon for decades.

Most of the material gathered by the Apollo missions remains under NASA lock and key. They give away small samples to researchers and lend rocks out for exhibitions.The gift rocks which were given out were very small and encased in plastic globes. Collectors are often interested in moon rocks but should know that buying the moon rocks from the Apollo missions is illegal. Anyone trying to sell you moon rocks is either lying about the provenance or has obtained the rocks illegally.