|
Sotheby's auction house said the "moon rocks"
are the only known documented lunar matter in private hands.
They were offered for sale by an unidentified private American
collector who purchased them at auction in 1993 for $442,500.
Sotheby's said the buyer on Thursday was another private
American collector, but the name was not disclosed.
The auction house said ahead of the sale that the fragments,
ranging in size from about .079 inch x .079 inch (2 x 2mm) to
.039 inch x .039 inch (1 x 1mm), could fetch up to $1 million.
The lunar samples originally belonged to Nina Ivanovna Koroleva,
the widow of former Soviet space program director Sergei
Pavlovich Korolev. They were presented to her as a gift on
behalf of the Soviet Union in recognition of her husband’s
contributions to the program, Sotheby's said.
The particles were retrieved in September 1970 by the unmanned
Luna-16, which drilled a hole in the surface to a depth of 13.8
inches (35 cm) and extracted a core sample, the auction house
said in a statement.
Most other known samples taken from the moon remain with the two
entities that collected them: the United States during the
Apollo 11-17 missions and the Soviet Union via the unmanned
Luna-16, Luna-20, and Luna-24 missions.
Collectors pay huge sums for space exploration artifacts. Last
year Sotheby's sold a zippered bag stamped with the words “Lunar
Sample Return" laced with moon dust which was used by Neil
Armstrong for the first manned mission to the moon in 1969, for
$1.8 million.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
 |
|
