NASA could nullify auction of Apollo 11 handle

From staff and wire reports

(CNN) -- A controversial auction that put a silver handle from the spacecraft Apollo 11 in the hands of an unknown bidder could be nullified if NASA pursues a legal claim to ownership.

The auction house Butterfield & Butterfield agreed to the sale condition because of an ongoing space agency investigation involving the handle, which a former NASA worker sold over the weekend for $34,500.

"Because the NASA inquiry is continuing there is an additional conditional of sale that should NASA decide that the item should be returned to them, we will certainly return funds to the buyer," said Butterfield spokesman Levi Morgan.

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NASA is trying to determine whether the spacecraft's handle should have reached Butterfields' auction block at all.

The Apollo 11 handle had been fixed to the outside of the command module that guided astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into the moon's orbit in 1969.

Usually objects from historic space flights end up on exhibit at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, which houses the Apollo 11 command module.

But the handle instead took another route, a winding one that took it from a NASA facility to the remote Texas ranch of Charles Brown.

Brown, who sold the item at the auction, is a former radiation safety officer at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, who performed tests on the silver handle in the 1970s.

Brown kept the handle in a safe after leaving NASA and performed periodic tests on it for the administration to check for radiation exposure.

The Office of Inspector General for NASA said Monday that an ongoing investigation is trying to determine ownership.

"That's the central issue of the whole thing. At this point, I don't know, to be honest with you," said Sam Maxey, assistant inspector general, when asked who owned the handle.

"It's a legal issue that needs to be resolved. Our investigative people are still looking at it."

Last week, an Ohio man who attempted to auction a piece of the space shuttle Challenger on the Internet pleaded guilty to possessing U.S. government property with the intent to convert it to his own use.

Charles Starowesky, who offered a heat shield from the shuttle for sale on eBay, was sentenced to two years probation, according to NASA. He picked the piece up from the Atlantic Ocean while assigned to a Navy and Coast Guard recovery team following the 1986 Challenger explosion.

Other items sold at the Butterfield auction on Sunday included a rare Mars meteorite that sold for $51,750. The fragment comes from one of only 15 known meteorites from the red planet.

A California collector discovered it about 20 years ago, but only found out it came from a Mars meteorite last year when he brought it to planetary geologists at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In-depth: Apollo 11 at 30

Antique-hunting online
August 25, 2000
Web site offering to sell votes shut down
August 23, 2000
Oddities on the auction block
August 11, 2000
Apollo-Soyuz: a giant leap in cooperation
July 17, 2000
Lesson Plan: Remembering Apollo 13
April 12, 2000

NASA
Butterfields Auction House
The Los Angeles Meteorite
National Air & Space Museum Exhibitions

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