Neil Armstrong's moon bag fetches $1.8 million in New York auction

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A bag Neil Armstrong used to collect the first ever samples of the moon, which was once almost thrown out with the trash, sold at an auction in New York on Thursday for 1.8 million US dollars, Sotheby's said.

The outer decontamination bag, which was flown to the moon on Apollo 11 and still carries traces of moon dust and small rocks, was sold on the 48th anniversary of the first moon landing in 1969.

Picture taken by the astronaut Neil A. Armstrong of the astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin near the Lunar Module of Apollo 11. /VCG Photo

Auctioneer Joe Dunning introduced the lot as "an exceptionally rare artifact from mankind's greatest achievement". It sold to an anonymous buyer on the telephone following a sluggish five-minute bidding war.

The previous owner of the bag was an Illinois lawyer, who bought it in 2015 for 995 US dollars.

But even with the buyer's premium added to Thursday's 1.5-million-US-dollar hammer price, the bag fell short of Sotheby's pre-sale estimate of two to four million US dollars.

The Apollo 11 Contingency Lunar Sample Return Bag used by Neil Armstrong is displayed for Sotheby's Space Exploration auction in New York City, US, July 13, 2017. /VCG Photo

The British auction company said it was the only artifact from the Apollo 11 mission left in private hands. After Apollo 11 returned to the Earth, nearly all the equipment from the mission was transferred to the Smithsonian, the world's largest museum located in the US.

However, an inventory error left the sample bag languishing in a box at the Johnson Space Center.

Staff were about to throw it away before offering it to a collector who ran a space museum in Kansas, keeping it unaware of its provenance.

When the collector was later convicted of theft, fraud and money laundering, the FBI seized the box from his garage to auction it off for restitution.

The bag was offered four times for sale before its last owner from Illinois bought it in 2015. /VCG Photo

The bag, which has a tear and is made of the same fire-retardant material as space suits, was offered four times for sale, before the Illinois lawyer bought it two years ago.

Noticing dark smudges inside, she sent it to NASA for testing, which confirmed in 2016 it was indeed moon dust from the Apollo 11 landing site, and that it was the decontamination bag listed in the Apollo 11 stowage list.

A legal battle ensued over ownership, which ended in a federal judge ordering NASA to return the bag to the lawyer, who then offered it for sale.

(Source: AFP)

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