The legality possessing or acquiring Apollo moon rocks

In My Humble Opinion
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This thread had its origins as an on-topic reply by @Schnitte in the missing artworks and treasures thread, responses to which veered off into a hijack on the legality of owning or acquiring moon rocks.

The conversation continued with contributions by @Omar_Little, @DrDeth. @markn_1, @Northern_Piper, @bryanmaguire, @hajario, and yours truly. After @Chronos asked us to knock off the hijack, I dived waaaayyyy down this rabbit hole, and can make an extensive, but not exhaustive, report.

TL/DR: “A 2,400-word OP? Are you nuts, commasense? I know all there is to know about Moon Rocks. Take me to the discussion about the legality of possessing or acquiring moon rocks.”

In preparing this report I have referred to many sources, but especially CollectSpace.com, a “news publication and online community for space history enthusiasts and professionals,” managed by Robert Pearlman.

Basic Facts about Moon Rocks

There are four sources of lunar material here on the surface of the earth:

The last category, meteorites, is the only one which is unequivocally legal for private citizens to own. A 30-pound lunar meteorite was sold for $2.5 million in 2020.

However, the following discussion will center exclusively on the 842 pounds of lunar samples brought back by the six Apollo missions that landed on the moon.

All of that material was kept by NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, in the Lunar Sample Building specially built to store and process it. NASA makes samples available for scientific research, public display, and education. The last category mostly involves distributing Lunar Sample Disks that contain “three Lunar rock and three Lunar soil (regolith) samples collected by Apollo astronauts…[encapsulated] in a six-inch diameter clear Lucite disk.” Several of these have been stolen or otherwise gone missing.

Samples loaned to researchers are supposed to be carefully accounted for while in use, and returned to NASA when the research is concluded, unless they were destroyed in the process. Borrowers sign loan agreements that specify these terms, and Johnson Space Center’s Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office is supposed to audit them for compliance.

It turns out that this has not always been done perfectly. In late 2011, perhaps in response to some of the incidents discussed below, NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report (PDF) on an audit that had been conducted over the previous year. It found that “Curation Office records were inaccurate, researchers could not account for all samples loaned to them, and researchers held samples for extended periods without performing research or returning the samples to NASA.”

Here is a news item that summarizes the OIG report.

However, as far as I can tell, except for the NASA interns theft discussed below, none of the reported cases of “stolen” moon rocks that have involved law enforcement or lawsuits (summarized below) have involved research material. Virtually all of those cases have involved material from the Apollo Goodwill program or, in a few cases, material allegedly given to someone by an astronaut.

Although “moon rocks” may conjure the image of a fist-sized chunk, excepting the interns theft and one other case (see Cicco below), all of the samples in question are extremely small. The largest were a little over one gram, 0.035 ounces. For comparison, a dime weighs 2.3 grams. The smallest were barely more than dust, 0.05 grams. i.e., one-twentieth of a gram.

Using my kitchen scale, I determined that one dry split pea (half of a whole pea) weighs roughly one tenth of a gram.

Google Photos

(Note that this sample is 2 grams, at least twice as large as all but two of the cases we will discuss below.)

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The Goodwill programs

In 1971, President Nixon ordered NASA to prepare a number of commemorative plaques containing a small sample of moon dust collected by Apollo 11 to be officially presented to the U.S. states and territories and foreign countries. It is reported that 250 were made, but by my count, only 192 were actually presented.

According to CollectSpace.com…

Each presentation included 0.05 grams [0.0018 ounces] of Apollo 11 moon dust, in the form of four small pieces encased in an acrylic button, as well as the flag of the recipient nation or state, also flown on the first manned lunar landing mission.

A similar set of plaques were created upon the return of Apollo 17, the last moon mission, but these included much larger stone chips in their Lucite buttons: about 1.14 grams, 0.04 ounces. By my count, 187 of these were presented.

(For the sake of completeness, I’ll mention that from 2004 to 2015 NASA also presented “Ambassador of Exploration” awards to 32 Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts, plus mission controllers Gene Kranz and Chris Kraft; journalist Walter Cronkite; and the family of President Kennedy. They contained lunar material encased in Lucite, and all were presented in the recipients’ names to museums of their choice, where AFAIK, all remain.)

Here’s my tabulation of the status of the Goodwill moon rocks, based on the tables at CollectSpace.com:

>
Apollo 11Apollo 17Total
US states56 52 108
Countries136 135 271
Total given192187379
Known102108210
Missing9079169
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Cases of purported moon rock theft or misappropriation

In addition to attempts to sell fraudulent moon rocks (which will not be dealt with here), there have been a number of cases of people trying to sell genuine lunar material. Here’s the Wikipedia page on stolen and missing Goodwill samples.

The following are a few notable cases, including some not mentioned at that page. Links in the headings are to the summaries of the cases at CollectSpace.com.

Honduran sample, 1995

The Apollo 17 Goodwill sample presented to Honduras was sold in 1995 by a retired Honduran military officer, who almost certainly did not have a legal claim to it, to a Florida businessman, Alan Rosen, for $50,000. Rosen responded to an advertisement looking for moon rocks, and offered to sell it for $5 million. The ad was a sting set up by NASA’s inspector general. The rock was seized and after a trial it was returned to Honduras in 2003. Rosen was not charged. Wikipedia article.

NASA Interns theft, 2002

Three NASA interns stole a 600-pound safe containing 53 lunar samples, amounting to 3.58 ounces/101.5 grams. The three, and an accomplice who attempted to sell the rocks for them, were caught, tried, and sentenced. The material was returned to NASA. Wikipedia article.

Joann Davis case, May 2011

The wife of a deceased NASA engineer had a Lucite paperweight with a “rice-grain-sized fragment” of lunar material allegedly given to husband by Neil Armstrong. (The search warrant asserted that Armstrong previously told investigators he never gave away any lunar material.) NASA conducted sting against the 74-year-old Davis, who sued NASA for its agents’ unnecessarily harsh treatment of her. She won that case in 2017, reportedly settling for $100,000. The sample was not returned to her.

The linked article at Space.com, written by CollectSpace.com’s Pearlman, states that…

NASA maintains it has never gifted or otherwise provided any individual with a piece of the moon. Even the astronauts were not permitted to keep a rock for themselves.

H.R. 4158, 2012

In September 2012, President Obama signed H.R. 4158, a law “To confirm full ownership rights for certain United States astronauts to artifacts from the astronauts’ space missions.” It gave Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts “full ownership of and clear title to… any expendable item utilized in [their] missions…not expressly required to be returned to [NASA]… excluding lunar rocks and other lunar material.” [Emphasis mine.]

Nancy Lee Carlson case, 2015, 2019

A woman bought an authentic lunar sample return bag, containing a small quantity of moon dust, that was accidentally sold at auction without NASA’s knowledge or consent. She sued NASA to have it returned after they authenticated it, and won, then sold it at auction for $1.8 million, less than the $2-4 million expected. She sued NASA again in 2019 alleging that damage done to the bag, and NASA’s removal of some of the dust while in its possession, lowered the bag’s value when auctioned in 2017. She settled the case for $50,000 and return of most of the dust, which she also sold at auction for $500,000 in 2022.

To my knowledge, this is the only known case of officially acknowledged legal private ownership of verified Apollo lunar material.

Laura Murray Cicco case, 2017

A woman has a lipstick-sized tube of alleged lunar dust she claims was given to her when she was 10 by Neil Armstrong, who was a friend of her father. She also has a note on the back of her father’s business card with a verified Armstrong signature.

An independent testing laboratory has determined that…

…this sample may have originated from lunar regolith. At this point, it would be difficult to rule out lunar origin. I am speculating, but it may be possible that some dust from the earth became mingled with this likely lunar sample.

Based on the photograph, this is clearly the largest sample of alleged Apollo moon material in private hands. Although it appears to be all dust, not rock, it must weigh several grams at least.

In 2017 she pre-emptively sued NASA in U.S. District Court for the district of Kansas to “settle ownership” of the material. Lawsuit (PDF). In 2019, a judge granted NASA’s motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction. That decision (PDF). Her appeal of the decision was also dismissed. She retains the material.

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SDMB discussion on the subject

@Schnitte started this ball rolling by posting in the lost artworks and treasures thread that a lot of moon rocks are missing, but that some have been recovered, in particular through the efforts of lawyer and former NASA investigator Joseph Gutheinz. Gutheinz was responsible for the recovery of the Honduran sample mentioned above.

@Omar_Little posted that a friend of his has jewelry made from moon rocks collected by her father, one of the 12 Apollo moonwalkers.

@DrDeth asserted that possession of moon rocks is illegal, which started the whole hijack, with @markn_1 and @Schnitte claiming that mere possession is not illegal. @DrDeth replied, and at this point I chimed in with a hasty post that @markn_1 pointed out did not make the point I thought it did. I also mentioned the first Nancy Lee Carlson case.

The back-and-forth continued until I found the OIG report mentioned in the OP, and @Chronos asked us to knock off the hijack and start a new thread.

Which I have just done.

It seems to me that the issues we raised in those posts fall into two basic categories, legal and factual. After I have posted them here, I plan to e-mail Kevin Underhill with the legal questions, and Robert Pearlman and Joseph Gutheinz with the legal and practical ones. With any luck, we may get a response from one or more of them.

In the meantime, we can obviously discuss the questions, and perhaps our resident lawyers and space experts will chime in.

Legal

With respect to Apollo moon material,

  1. Is simple possession of moon rocks illegal?
    Kevin Underhill (lawyer and Lowering the Bar blogger) says no.

    As I have written before, it’s just that moon rocks are so difficult to come by (assuming you aren’t on the Moon) that any private citizen who’s got one probably stole it or got it from someone who did. Possession isn’t illegal, but stealing is.

  2. What laws cover possession of moon rocks?

  3. What laws cover transfer (sale, gift, etc.) of moon rocks?

  4. Could an Apollo astronaut legally have kept some moon rocks for himself?

    • Pearlman says NASA says no. See Joann Davis case.

    • Davis search warrant says Armstrong claims that he didn’t.

    • H.R. 4158 (2012 law) says astronauts cannot have a claim to lunar material. Can it apply ex post facto?

  5. What would be the legal status of someone who found, without deceit or criminal behavior, one of the lost Goodwill moon rocks? Pearlman again (link above):

    Once gifted, each of the lunar sample displays became the property of the recipient entity and therefore was no longer subject to being tracked by NASA.
    […]
    As property of the nation or state, the Apollo 11 lunar samples are now subject to the laws for public gifts as set by that country. In most cases, as in the United States, public gifts cannot be legally transferred to individual ownership without the passage of additional legislation.

    [Emphasis mine.]

    • Obviously depends on the laws of the jurisdiction.

    • See the unusual case of a Florida man who found Louisiana’s Apollo 17 plaque and returned it anonymously.

Factual

  1. Could an Apollo astronaut practically have kept or otherwise obtained some lunar material (e.g., Cicco’s dust, or @Omar_Little ’s friend’s jewelry) for himself? How?
  2. Several sources claim that 250 Goodwill plaques were made for Apollo 11 and 250 for Apollo 17. But according to various lists, less than 200 of each were presented to US states and other countries. Were 250 of each type of Lucite lunar sample buttons made? If so, what happened to the rest? Is the Joann Davis paperweight one of them?
  3. If not, what is the source of the Joann Davis paperweight?
  4. Is there evidence that astronauts, NASA employees, or others had unmonitored access to lunar material and could have taken some and improperly dispersed it to other people?
  5. For the experts: What is your opinion about the Cicco material and other claims that Apollo astronauts gave lunar material as gifts?
  6. Can anyone other than NASA authenticate lunar material?
  7. Can alleged lunar material embedded in Lucite be reliably authenticated non-destructively?
  8. How easily could someone make “lunar dust” that appears real? Could it pass authentication?

I have a number of thoughts and ideas about these questions, but I think you’ve all heard enough from me for now.

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This is a criminal provision that criminalises certain acts in relation to items owned by the United States or a government agency. It does not say how title to these items passes; the provision presupposes that the item in question is government property, but it does not stipulate which items are government property, or how they could cease to be such.

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You are right that 18 U.S.C. § 641 is the general law regarding theft of government property, and does not deal specifically with lunar material. I listed it because I believe it is the statute under which the NASA interns were prosecuted.

It is NASA’s position that all Apollo lunar material is government property, except for the Goodwill materials which are the official property of the entities that they were given to.

Would you care to play at being a lawyer and make a case for either one of the people we’ve met above, or a theoretical possessor of some other lunar material?

Or present a hypothetical case in which moon material could become private property? We know of only one such case, the dust in Carlson’s lunar sample return bag.

On the one hand, I don’t believe that Armstrong, or any of the astronauts, could practically have slipped some material into their personal bag that NASA allowed them to keep after the mission. And legally, I doubt that an astronaut could make a successful claim, as I think you suggested, that because they just happened to pick up this rock, on their own time, to take home to Betty, it’s their property, not NASA’s.

So I doubt the authenticity of Cicco’s vial of dust, and @Omar_Little’s friend’s jewelry. (Not casting aspersions on Omar or his friend.)

On the other hand, it seems that NASA has been a little lax in its handling of some of the lunar material. If the claims are correct that 250 Goodwill plaques were made for each mission, including the Lucite buttons, what happened to the 100+ lunar samples that weren’t officially presented? Did astronauts or engineers or other random NASA employees have access to them? The picture of Joann Davis’ paperweight does not look similar. Where did it come from?

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The scenario I’m thinking of is one where an actual Apollo astronaut picks up a rock and takes it home, just for himself, not as part of any official sample-collecting mission. The rock could then be given as a gift to a close friend, or stay in the family as an heirloom. I’m happy to believe that this violates NASA policy, and that NASA would (upon hearing of this) claim that the rock is theirs. But I’m not convinced that this claim would succeed. Under what legal provision could they claim title to the rock?

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Sure. But possession of stolen property is.

Are there Moon rocks in private possession that are legal, that were bought or gifted from NASA? Just that little bit of dust that NASA inadvertently sold.

However. what i was replying to was a claim that some woman had Moon rocks earrings. Since the only source of moon rocks is NASA, and they have only accidentally sold some small amount of dust, if said earrings has real Moon rocks, they can only be stolen property.

The problem with this is that everything was carefully decontaminated. It would be very hard to an astronaut to sneak such a thing.

Is such a thing possible? I suppose- but showing “moon rock” earring in public and bragging about them would get NASAs legal department involved, and we would have heard about it.

But thank you for this exhaustive search and posts. Good research.

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Well, there was the scandal with the Apollo 15 stamped envelopes. So there is precedent for Apollo astronauts sneaking unauthorised items that had been to the lunar surface aboard the lander past NASA checks.

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Great research. Thank you.

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Although the “Skylab mutiny” situation was greatly overblown, it was the case at NASA through the 1970s that astronauts were expected by the ground schedulers and scientific investigators to get lots and lots of work done during their precious time in space. This led to some tension with the Skylab 4 astronauts in 1974, who naturally wanted and needed time to relax, wind down, and do things they wanted to do.

So I’m pretty sure that, during the Apollo missions and through the mid-1970s, the official NASA position would have been that during an EVA on the surface of the moon the astronauts were on the clock, and didn’t have any personal time to pursue their own interests.

I also agree with @DrDeth that the probability that an astronaut could have smuggled out some lunar material undetected is vanishingly small.

But since we now live in a world of “What if we did, anyway,” let’s say someone did manage to do it. You’re one of the twelve moon walkers, and you have some extremely rare, extremely valuable rocks, or dust, you brought back from the moon. What are you going to do with it?

Give a tube of dust to the 10-year-old child of a friend? Have some jewelry made with some rather unattractive chips of basalt? Moon rocks don’t exactly look like diamonds.

Even if, in the early 1970s, the astronauts didn’t know that moon rocks would be worth millions at auction, they certainly did know that keeping them was against NASA policy and that there would be some significant consequences if they were found out, if not to their careers, to their reputations.

But giving the stuff to a child, a friend, or a relative would have been a pretty significant risk, IMO. And would anyone really want some unattractive earrings they could never wear in public? It’d be kinda like stealing the Mona Lisa. All you can do is look at it when no one else is around. You can’t show it to any one, you can’t even tell anyone you have it.

Okay, but let’s say someone did, and NASA claims it belongs to the government, not the astronaut or subsequent recipient. You say…

…and you’re right that it is an open question.

Any of our resident lawyers care to opine?

In the meantime, I hope to reach some space historians I happen to know and ask for their thoughts.

12

Golf balls and a corned beef sandwich were smuggled into space. I doubt they returned tho’.

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This thread may be of interest.

14

Just like the probability of Alan Shepard sneaking a 6 iron onto the flight vehicle, using it on the moon without the approval of NASA and bringing it back and giving it to the USGA hall of fame in NJ.

15

I wonder what happened to that harmonica some astronaut played Jingle Bells on?

No detection is safe/sure when folks are invested in sneaking.

16

It was his personal item , Shepard brought just the head of a 6 iron and kitbashed it into a makeshift golf club. It was authorized.

“Being a golfer, I was intrigued,” Shepard told a NASA interviewer in February, 1998, five months before he died at 74. “I thought: What a neat place to whack a golf ball.” While stories have persisted that Shepard sprung this stunt on his own—or smuggled the club head and balls to the lunar surface, he had indeed gotten permission.

It took him a while, though, to convince Manned Spaceflight Center director Bob Gilruth, who was not keen on the idea.

Each Astronaut is allowed some 8oz or so of personal items, Aldrin brought along some items like a communion wafer so he could have Communion. etc etc.

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So,were those personal items inspected before and after the flight? I can imagine bringing an 8 oz bottle of something, dumping the stuff out on the moon and refilling it with 8 oz of regolith. Still my personal item, still weighs the same. No one would know unless they opened the little bottle on Earth and checked it.

18

Astronauts are really proud of being an astronaut, they wouldnt jeopardize their career and pension over that. All the moon rocks had to be specially decontaminated.

Look at the stamp scandal-
Apollo 15 postal covers incident - Wikipedia.

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What does being proud of being an Astronaut have to do with a corn beef sandwich or a portable radio?
It’s common knowledge they took unauthorized stuff up there.
What’s to say they didn’t bring some back?

20

Okay, show me about that radio and that is was unauthorized, since the claim the the golf club was unauthorized turned out to be false.

Yeah, Young had been offered a sandwich on an early Gemini flight (not to the Moon, so less controls), and “absentmindedly” (??) stuffed it in a pocket, then shared part with Grissom.

The Gemini flights didnt have the careful decontamination controls the moon flights did. And there were no pockets in the moon suits. The rocks were put in special containers, there was no touching of the rocks by the astronauts. So, one would have had to break into one of the special containers, steal a rock, put in his pocket, then … well, since the suits were taken from them and everything decontaminated- what? Smuggled it ala Papillon?

Everything they wore was taken from them and sterilized. They were quarantined.

https://history.nasa.gov/afj/lrl/apollo-quarantine.html

Nothing symbolizes the planetary protection effort better than the Apollo Lunar Sample Return Container - known with the somewhat cumbersome acronym of ALSRC, and more pleasantly called the rock box. Typically two of these flew on each mission, stored in the MESA - an equipment storage unit on the base of the Lunar Module. These were no ordinary cases, but had been designed with the purpose of containing the lunar samples in a perfectly sealed environment until the box would be opened in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory on Earth. To keep the lunar samples pristine, once they were closed on the lunar surface, nothing could get in and out of them, thanks to the sturdy construction, the locking mechanisms and a triple sealing mechanism at the lid. They were designed to withstand great physical forces, and even a computer simulation of a rock box was created to calculate the possible G forces it might have to endure during the mission. It is perhaps a good indicator of the seriousness of this effort that they were constructed at the Y-12 Plant at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, at a government facility best known for manufacturing nuclear bombs.

Once they landed the Apollo astronauts were whisked off in a sealed quarantine facility.

The Handing of Lunar Samples

The lunar sample retrieval plan called for complete isolation of the lunar material. This was done for the purpose of two-way isolation - both to protect the Earth biosphere from exposure to the lunar material, as well as to prevent the back contamination of the lunar samples via Earth organisms and materials. For this purpose, an elaborate system was designed and constructed that would maintain the initial lunar samples in such preferred condition.

The astronauts were quarantined for 21 days.