A photo US Space Agency NASA stated that the moonstones that were brought to Earth by the crew the Apollo 17 ship, in most cases were stolen or lost for other strange reasons.
President Richard Nixon sent some moonstones in the form of gifts to leaders and eminent figures of more than a hundred countries of the world. In total, the result of this generosity from America was nearly three hundred fragments of the Moon’s rock were removed, most of which of them simply disappeared without a trace.
According to analysts of this “incident”, all stolen or missing for unknown reasons moonstones in the end settled in the collections of private owners. Sometimes such exhibits are up to still appear on the black market, as it happened, for example, with a stone donated by the US president to the government of Honduras. This a piece of lunar rock weighing almost a kilogram was sold on black five million US dollars market.
Note that only stones from the moon were sold at auctions, brought by Soviet cosmonauts, say, the crew of the project “Moon 16”. So, in 1993, at the Sotheby’s auction, almost lunar dust of 0.2 grams was sold for 443 thousand US dollars. Moreover, the happy buyer of this “unique” wished to stay unknown.
But the most amazing and offensive, NASSA clarifies, is a lot of moonlight the stones were just stolen. So, a large fragment of the lunar rock, sent at one time to the Romanian leader Ceausescu, disappeared into a circle of corrupt officials surrounding the dictator. Stone with Moon sent to Irish leader lost during fire: it was either stolen, or simply thrown into a landfill along with charred remains of the Dublin Observatory. And such cases – hundreds.
At the same time, large US corporations have already begun to share the moon. Not is it too early and careless when even the lunar rock in America is not can store with due diligence?
Time Stones Moon USA
