In theory, private ownership of moon rocks is illegal.
Stealing moon rocks is illegal, as stealing anything is. I don’t see anything in that article supporting the idea that mere possession of moon rocks is illegal. My favorite legal blog agrees.
That article doesn’t say that private ownership of moon rocks is illegal. I could see an argument that private ownership of a moon rock is indicative that the rock must have been stolen from some government agency; but in the case of a close relative of an actual Apollo astronaut, I could see it as perfectly possible that this astronaut brought back some small rocks for his own family. In doing so, he would probably have violated NASA policies, but whether that means his acts amount to theft in the criminal law sense is a wholly different matter.
This article tries to use the Outer Space Treaty as an argument why private ownership of moon rocks is illegal; but I find the argument unconvincing (and I’ve published academically on the OST): What the OST prohibits is the appropriation of celestial bodies by nations; that does not necessarily entail anything about private law property rights in rocks brought from a celestial body to Earth (if it did, then ownership of moon rocks by US government agencies would be just as illegal).
I thought that didnt need a cite.
Okay, then here it is-
The primary reason for the prohibition on owning moon rocks is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. This international agreement, signed by over 100 countries, including the United States, prohibits any nation from claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies, including the moon. As a result, the treaty considers moon rocks as the property of all humankind, and their ownership is strictly regulated.
Furthermore, the 1972 Moon Agreement reinforced these restrictions by stating that moon rocks should be used for the benefit of all countries and should not be exploited for commercial purposes. This agreement has not been ratified by major space-faring nations like the United States, Russia, and China, but it still influences international norms and regulations.
The United States, for instance, strictly controls the possession and sale of moon rocks. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the only entity authorized to distribute lunar samples for scientific research or public display. Private ownership of moon rocks obtained during the Apollo missions or any other means is considered illegal.
FAQ:
Q: Can I buy a moon rock?
A: No, it is illegal to buy or sell moon rocks obtained during the Apollo missions or any other means.
It is illegal to own or possess any lunar material brought back from the Apollo program, including those samples gifted to the states and other nations.
Mr. Underhill (of Lowering the Bar) states several times that possessing lunar material [from the Apollo program] is not illegal, but the case he cites at the bottom of that article, United States v. One Lucite Ball Containing Lunar Material (One Moon Rock) and One Ten Inch by Fourteen Inch Wooden Plaque, proves he’s wrong about that. The case is described in @DrDeth’s second cite above.
That same page also describes what is perhaps the only case of a person legally owning Apollo moon material, dust in this case. The government accidentally auctioned off a bag containing moon dust, and when the buyer asked NASA to verify that it was moon dust, they did, then refused to return it. The buyer sued, and won.
Yes, that’s the article I linked to in my post. I also wrote in that post why I don’t find it convincing.
I’m not following how the Lucite Ball case proves that owning moon rocks is illegal. As I understand it, that case turned on the fact that Ugarte stole the artifact from the Honduran government:
The district court disagreed, finding that the rock was Honduran national property that can only be alienated by legislation, that the colonel committed larceny of the stone in the early 1990s, and that good title could never have been conferred in any legal senses at a minimum unless the statute of limitations have passed since the theft (more than 14 years). Under Honduran law, it was stolen property without excuse. U.S. law provides that the government can seek forfeiture under 19 U.S.C. §1595a(c)(1)(A) if the seized merchandise “which is introduced or attempted to be introduced into the United States contrary to law” is “stolen, smuggled or clandestinely imported or introduced”. Since the moon rock was stolen under Honduran law and smuggled to the country, then forfeiture was proper, and Mr. Rosen was deprived of his moon rock. This is the only published case about lunar material, and it was not even decided on the grounds that possession was illegal under U.S. law.
The last sentence clearly states that this case has nothing to do with whether ownership of moon rocks is illegal under US law.
Oops. Sorry, I didn’t read it closely enough.
[Emily Litella] Never mind. [/EL]
What about @DrDeth’s second link, to the law firm? That seems fairly authoritative.
You mentioned above “the only case of a person legally owning Apollo moon material”. It seems to me that that case in itself proves that ownership of moon rocks is not per se illegal. If it were, she would have lost that case.
The law firm article observes that rocks that were gifted to another government cannot be privately owned, but then goes on with the apparent non-sequitur “It is illegal to own or possess any lunar material brought back from the Apollo program, including those samples gifted to the states and other nations.” As far as I can see, only the gifted samples are illegal to own.
Sure, since NASA sold it to her. But NASA has no sold or given any moon rocks away to any private person. Altho sure, if you went to the moon and gathered rocks, you’d be okay, every single moon rock was the property of NASA, and since NASA has sold no moon rocks (they inadvertently did sell some dust) any moon rock in private hands is possession of stolen property, thus ipso facto- private possionion of NASA moon rocks is illegal. Its like if you had the Mona Lisa. Did the Louvre sell it to you? No. Thus ipso facto private possession of the Mona Lisa is illegal.
Here are the relevant details of that case, from @DrDeth’s second link. (I have inserted paragraph breaks for clarity, and added emphases.)
However, there is precedent that a person can acquire good title to lunar material if it was mistakenly sold by the government to said person. In 2005, Max Ary, the former director of a museum called the Kansas Cosmosphere, was indicted on several criminal charges for wrongfully selling space artifacts including a bag of moon rock and dust brought back by the Apollo 11 mission. He was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.
The bag of moon dust was eventually inadvertently sold at auction with the other seized items by the United States Marshall’s Service. The item was bought by Nancy Lee Carlson, an Illinois attorney, for $995.00. She sent the item to NASA to verify that there was truly dust from the Moon on the bag. NASA did verify the authenticity of the dust and confirmed this bag held the first samples of lunar material ever collected and it was probably worth between $2 to $4 million. However, NASA refused to return the bag and claimed the items were government property.
Ms. Carlson sued in the U.S. District Court for Kansas (Carlson v. United States et. al., Ct. #: 2:19-cv-02027) for replevin and conversion of her property acquired as a bona fide, good faith purchaser at auction. The court ruled in her favor and Ms. Carlson was entitled to keep the bag with moon dust and all. NASA declined to appeal the decision to the appellate courts.
She later sold it in an auction on July 20, 2017 for $1.8 million.
This appears to be the only case in which the government has voluntarily, although unwittingly, sold moon material. Except for the material contained in offical gifts to US states and other countries, or given or loaned to scientific researchers, no other Apollo moon material has officially left the possession of NASA.
Here is a fairly authoritative article on the subject from Smithsonian magazine. Unfortunately, neither it, not any of the other articles we’ve linked here, actually give citations to an actual law, other than the 2012 law that gave astronauts clear title to any NASA artifacts they acquired except moon rocks.
AFAIK, the claims that grandpa moonwalker kept a few moon pebbles for himself and handed them out to relatives have not been verified. And apparently some of those claims have proven to be fraudulent.
But since NASA asserts that all moon material is government property, it could just be that any such material not in its possession, or held by the states or countries in the form of official gifts, is by definition stolen government property, and covered by whatever laws deal with such crimes. There may be no need to refer to the Outer Space Treaty, which I agree is a tenuous argument.
ETA, as ninjaed by @DrDeth.
Oh yes, absolutely.
So if some lady said her earrings are moon rocks, she is either lying, mistaken, or in possession of stolen government property.
All this talk of moon rocks being property of the government sounds very similiar to the story of the 1933 Double Eagle $20 gold coin. They were minted but never officially released before FDR enacted the ban on gold ownership in 1934. There were more than 440,000 minted, but all were melted, except for two given to national museums and 20 or so that disappeared from the mint. Any that have been offered for sale have been confiscated by the Secret Service and subsequently melted. Ten were siezed from someone close to the minters and went through the courts, only to be ordered returned to the US government; they are now stored at Fort Knox.
However, one of the clandestine coins was obtained by King Farouk of Egypt, an avid coin collector. After his death the coin disappeared for decades, but showed up in a sting of a British collector. He sued, saying the coin was from Farouk, who had an obtained an official export license for the coin, making it legal. The whole story is a fascinating read.
Or she is, in fact, the daughter of an astronaut who brought back a small piece of rock specifically for her. Which would be a violation of NASA policies, but it would be difficult to make the argument that it amounts to theft.
As a retired copy editor, I must correct what I now see is ambiguous language in my previous post. This sentence should read,
But since NASA asserts that all moon material is government property, it could just be that any such material not in its possession, or not held by the states or countries in the form of official gifts, is by definition stolen government property, and covered by whatever laws deal with such crimes.
Not merely NASA policy, but the 2012 law mentioned above that explicitly excludes moon rocks from the category of things that Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts can legitimately own and pass along.
So it wouldn’t be theft by the daughter, but by the astronaut. If it had been given to her before the 2012 law was passed, would that make it legit? I’ll leave that to our resident legal experts, but I suspect the government would say no.
It seems to me that the 2012 law may have been passed to remove the threat of lawsuits against space collectors in the area of NASA-made artifacts, but with the explicit exception of moon rocks, which are inherently vastly more valuable.
What if I and El Salvador traded my 100 bit coin for the moon rock that they were gifted in 1970?
I’m not sure how authoritative that article really is. It’s written by a scientist, not a lawyer, and this is a decidedly lawyerly question. Also, take the following quote from the article:
Although NASA has sued in court to recover any such bootleg sample, no prosecution has succeeded, except for those caught (literally) in the act of theft.
This wording doesn’t give me confidence that the article is super clear on the difference between civil proceedings to recover property and criminal prosecution.
Yes, becuase everything the NASA astronauts brought back is government property.
Says who? I mean, in terms of legal authority, not just a NASA statement claiming this.
Wouldn’t there also be civil statute of limitations issues at some point?
Even if something was government property, can they sue to recover it 50 years later?