On July 13th 2002, 25-year-old NASA trainee, Thad Roberts and his accomplices broke into the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and stole a safe full of priceless
Theft of NASA rocks
In June 2002, 101 grams of Moon rocks were stolen from the Johnson Space Center by interns Thad Roberts and Tiffany Fowler. The pair used knowledge of the security around the rocks gained during their internship to remove a 272 kg (600 lb) safe in building 31 North containing the samples.
Thad currently works as a theoretical physicist for a private think tank.
In the nearly 50 years since Apollo 11 astronauts first landed on the moon, the more than 842 pounds of rocks, pebbles, sand and dust collected during U.S. moon landings have been variously stolen, lost, found and, in the case of most of the specimens, carefully preserved in nitrogen-filled cabinets to keep the cosmic ...
Apollo 11 carried the first geologic samples from the Moon back to Earth. In all, astronauts collected 21.6 kilograms of material, including 50 rocks, samples of the fine-grained lunar regolith (or "soil"), and two core tubes that included material from up to 13 centimeters below the Moon's surface.
Moon rocks (weed) are completely legal and often sold at dispensaries. A quick warning: Moon rock is a fun nickname for this special cannabis product.
The samples, collected by the Chang'e-5 spacecraft, are the first brought back to Earth since NASA's Apollo and the Soviet Union's Luna missions more than 40 years ago. They are being examined for insight into the Moon's evolution. Those studies are starting to yield exciting results.
There were 370 pieces gathered for this purpose from the two missions. Two hundred and seventy were given to nations of the world and 100 to the 50 US states. But 184 of these are lost, stolen or unaccounted for - 160 around the world and 24 in the US.
NASA maintains that “lunar material retrieved from the Moon during the Apollo Program is U.S. Government property.” In other words, the government owns it, and you can't sell it.
Moon rocks collected during the course of lunar exploration are currently considered priceless. In 2002, a safe was stolen from the Lunar Sample Building that contained minute samples of lunar and Martian material.
Godwin was born July 2, 1952, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, but her hometown is Jackson, Missouri.
While it is illegal for private collectors to own Apollo return samples, it is entirely legal to buy lunar meteorites.
Although the three men did not have the chance to walk on the Moon, Haise and Swigert became the 13th and 14th men to reach it (Lovell had been to the Moon on Apollo 8). After a harrowing journey, the crew returned safely to Earth. Apollo 14 was a little less hair-raising.
The post-classical commentator Ibn Kathir provides a list of the early traditions mentioning the incident: a tradition transmitted on the authority of Anas ibn Malik states that Muhammad split the Moon after the pagan Meccans asked for a miracle.
The 382 kilograms (842 lbs.) of moon rocks returned to earth by astronauts during the Apollo program are all officially the property of the US government, and cannot be sold.
The leading theory of the Moon's origin is that a Mars-sized body collided with Earth about 4.5 billion years ago.
The moon's actual color is an off-white brown-gray when its dusty surface is sunlit. But Earth's atmosphere modifies our views of the moon, altering colors and shape.
At the National Air and Space Museum in DC, you can touch a piece of the Moon. The Moon rock on display in our Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, is one of only a few touchable lunar samples in the world.
Answer: The lunar basalts are mostly in the younger group with an age of 3.5 billion years. The highland samples have ages (4.56 + 4.47 + 4.42 + 4.418 + 4.331 + 4.290 + 4.090)/7 = 4.37 billion years, or rounded to the nearest 0.1 you get 4.4 billion years.
Shiny, black impact-generated glass was splashed on the side. Between 1969 and 1972 six Apollo missions brought back 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface.
But after estimating the age of the new Moon rocks based on the rate of decay of radioactive elements in these samples, we determined these latest samples to be about two billion years old. This makes them the youngest volcanic rocks identified on the Moon so far.
They found that the lunar soil had levels of water around 28.5 parts per million – relatively dry, even for the moon.
NASA scientists have unsealed an extraterrestrial time capsule 50 years after astronauts collected the rock and dust from the moon and sealed it away before returning to Earth. The precious sample from Apollo 17 is one of the last pristine remaining bits of the moon.
Another lunar sample was stolen from a museum in Malta between 1990 and 1994; it was recovered in another sting operation in 1998. The federal government forbids private ownership of any Apollo sample.