NASA asserts ownership of Moon dust & dead cockroaches; demands halt of their sale

NASA, in a letter to Boston-based RR Auction, has demanded to halt the sale of lunar samples and a few carcasses of cockroaches who were fed the Moon dust as part of an experiment. The lot, which includes the dead cockroaches and a vial of the Moon dust, was scheduled to go under the hammer on June 23 and was expected to fetch as much as $4,00,000 (Rs3.12 crore). However, NASA now claims that they belong to the US government and thus, the bidding process must stop. 

NASA demands immediate halt of the auctions

"We are requesting that you no longer facilitate the sale of any and all items containing the Apollo 11 Lunar Soil Experiment (the cockroaches, slides, and post-destructive testing specimen) by immediately stopping the bidding process", the space agency wrote in its letter as per The Guardian. During the Apollo 11 mission, astronauts brought around 22 kg of lunar rocks and soil and a portion of the samples were fed to the cockroaches to see if it affected them in any way. 

Following the experiment, the cockroaches were handed over to Marion Brooks, an entomologist from the University of St. Paul, who found no ill effects of the lunar content on the cockroaches. For her study, she dissected eight preserved cockroaches having lunar samples and prepared tissue slides for microscopic study. After Brooks's death in 2007, a small glass vial with "ground fines of lunar sample recovered from biological tests" and three of the preserved samples along with the tissue slides was sold for $10,000 by Brooks' daughter. 

The current controversial auction is a resale of the 2010 bid and since the samples owned by Brooks never went back to NASA, the space agency is protesting. In the letter sent by NASA's Office of the General Counsel, the agency asserted its legal ownership citing the evidence and information provided in the description of the lot. "It is clear and undeniable that the materials consisting of the experiment are owned by NASA", the letter further stated.