🧑‍🚀 NASA's Lost & Found

From The Archives: The wild provenance of NASA's greatest artifacts

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With Artemis II mission bringing space travel back into the news-cycle, it felt like the right moment to revisit a Shiny Thing$ from the past - back when we were launching one of our earliest space artifacts on Rally... 

This week’s Shiny Thing$ is an archive edition: Issue 77 from April 2023, where we explored the collectible allure of space and incredible finds that are tied to it. And unlike many of the most important objects in American history, these often simply left behind… 

Throwback Edition: Shiny Things #77
“NASA’s Lost & Found”
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^{Originally Published in April, 2023…}

One would expect NASA would be rather conscientious as far as keeping track of their stuff. After all, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to stick a post-it note on a keepsake. But as it turns out, NASA isn’t just careless with their historic memorabilia, they’re consistently playing catch-up.

Even when it comes to their most storied mission in history: The Apollo 11 First Lunar Landing.

In July 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launched into space from Cape Kennedy. 600M people around the world watched eagerly on TV. Some VIPs like Johnny Carson, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Charles Lindbergh even got to witness the launch in person.

A few days later, Armstrong took Man’s first steps on the moon, uttering arguably the most famous words in history: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”

Armstrong was surprisingly calm during the most monumental moment of the 21st century. A fact we only know because NASA recorded his heartbeat using an EKG. The item, which was almost thrown out, was saved by a medical administrator at the space center.

That’s just one in a series of late realizations by NASA when it comes to space artifacts.

After a successful mission, the Apollo 11 trio splash-landed in the Pacific Ocean. NASA recovered as much material from the historic achievement as they could, including three controllers used to fly the spacecraft. NASA offered the controllers to the crew as gifts, but they refused.

So the irreplaceable pieces of history were mounted on wooden plaques and stored away in a safe at the Johnson Space Center… for over 15 years. NASA essentially just forgot about them.

It wasn’t until the NASA employee who managed the safe was about to retire in 1985 that the controllers were even a topic of discussion. After asking his supervisor what he should do with them, he was told to throw them out. Luckily, this employee disobeyed orders and kept them for himself.

After one joystick appeared at auction in 2013 - along with the original EKG taken of Armstrong’s heart during the mission - NASA all of a sudden decided to get possessive. They requested the lots be pulled from auction in order to allow for a review to determine whether or not the pieces were federal property.

But it only took a few years for NASA to simply give up. In July 2020, the three joysticks sold for over $780K after surfacing at auction once again.

One of those joysticks made its way to Rally: The original space-flown secondary rotational attitude control stick used by Buzz Aldrin to pilot the Command Module, “Columbia,” during the Apollo 11 mission.

Apollo 11 wasn’t the first or last time NASA’s been known to be forgetful when it comes to their prized possessions either…

A Lunar sample bag “loaned” by NASA was never tracked - with NASA losing ownership and the bag selling for $1.8M in 2017. Same story with a prototype lunar rover found in an Alabama junkyard, which was eventually sold privately in 2016.

There’s no doubt that space memorabilia is incredibly collectible and commands massive prices at auction thanks to its attachment to such key moments in history, but that hasn’t stopped NASA from trying to step in. To this point, mostly unsuccessfully.

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Until Next Week…