I guess I was asleep when the moon rocks were given away but that is very interesting..of course I had to go look for more...lolhttp://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=10910Every nation received a moon rock ? some of them can?t find it, (some of them were fake)
2010-05-13 0:00
By Mike Tolson | Chron.com
Neil Armstrong took his biggest step for all mankind, and as if to underscore the point his employer decided to share a small token of his lunar booty with nations of the planet. It was not much, at least by size, but the offering of small chunks of lunar rock to the head of every government was a symbolic gesture intended to promote goodwill.
More than 130 nations received inscribed plaques adorned with small replicas of their official flags ? which had made the trip to the moon and back ? along with a thumb-sized bit of black igneous rock beneath a Lucite shield. In mineralogical terms, the pebbles had no real value. But there was no beating them for rarity.
Years later, the fate of those Apollo 11 moon rocks, as well as a second goodwill offering in 1973 that followed the Apollo 17 mission, is in many cases an embarrassing mystery. Some likely are in archives and cannot easily be located. But others have disappeared with deposed dictators, aging government officials or crooked former bureaucrats. Every once in a while, one shows up in the shadowy recesses of illicit private commerce accompanied by a multimillion-dollar price tag and a no-questions proviso.
Joe Gutheinz, left, a retired investigator with NASA?s Office of Inspector General, has spent a fair portion of his adult life chasing missing moon rocks, determined to restore them to their rightful owners. The 54-year-old Gutheinz, who teaches an online class in investigative techniques for the University of Phoenix, has repeatedly used the missing rocks as an assignment for his students. They have been able to determine that 90 or so nations cannot account for the precious pebbles.
?The moon rocks are disappearing,? Gutheinz said. ?Most of the ones that are now truly gone will probably be gone forever.?
A few victories
It?s been a fascinating pursuit, and mostly fruitless. But every so often he managed a hit. In 1998, for instance, he set up a successful sting operation to recover the moon rock from Honduras.
?We formed a company called John?s Estate Sales and took out a quarter-page ad in USA Today saying ?Moon Rocks Wanted,??? Gutheinz recalled.
A response led to a website where pictures of the plaque and rock were posted. After two months of prompting, the owner went to Miami.
?He thought we might be undercover agents from the beginning,? Gutheinz said, ?but the lure of $5 million was too much.?
More recently, Gutheinz played a role in flushing out the owner of the goodwill moon rock that was intended to go to the government of Cyprus in 1973. The official presentation never happened because of the sectarian strife that wracked the island nation at the time. Rather than return the rock to NASA or the U.S. State Department for safekeeping until order was restored, an American diplomat kept it for years, then gave it to one of his children, Gutheinz said.
The world?s leading authority on space-related artifacts, Robert Pearlman, reported to NASA in 2003 that the Cyprus rock had been offered for sale.
Pearlman believes that the diplomat who originally had it probably had no ill intent in keeping it. Embassy personnel had been evacuated from the island, and he may have simply been at a loss at whom to give it to, he said. Apparently, later governments of the divided nation were not aware that such a gift had been offered.
Last September, Gutheinz made a formal request for a Congressional inquiry into the missing rock and why it had not been turned over to the government of Cyprus. He said he had two reasons for the request.
?First, to get our government to commit to recovering the moon rock, and by publicizing the inquiry place pressure on the person who had the moon rock to do the right thing and turn it over to either Cyprus or the U.S.,? he said. ?Chess is one of my favorite games, and I simply positioned my chess pieces. He started to realize he needed to give it back.?
The rock?s owner, who has not been named publicly, recently told NASA that he is willing to return the goodwill plaque. Now, Gutheinz is on the trail of two other rocks, one stolen from a museum in Malta in 2004 and one that had been in the possession of the late Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Hopeful for recovery
With the help of Gutheinz, Pearlman, who operates the website
www.collectspace.com, put together a list of nations and the status of their moon rocks. In an e-mail, he said that a fair number of the rocks currently unaccounted for will, in time, be located in archives or storage. Unlike Gutheinz, Pearlman is optimistic of the eventual return of many of those that were purloined.
?Unlike in the art world, for example, where there are reports of collectors content with possessing the art for their eyes only or as investment pieces, those who tend to desire space artifacts, and specifically moon rocks, are often keen to show off their prized pieces,? Pearlman said.
Although Gutheinz no longer has an official role to play in chasing down the lunar rocks, he has no plan to stop.
?We gave them away, and they weren?t taken care of like they should have been,? he said. ?They belong to the people.?
Article from: chron.com
Top: Photo of Moon rock at the Smithsonian (it?s still there): NASA
Moon Rock Fake
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=7773Moon Rock Fake
2009-08-27 0:00
By Tony Sterling | TorontoSun.com
It?s not green cheese, but it might as well be.
The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.
Rijksmuseum spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, said the museum will keep it anyway as a curiosity.
?It?s a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered,? she said. ?We can laugh about it.?
The museum acquired the rock after the death of former prime minister Willem Drees in 1988. Drees received it as a private gift on Oct. 9, 1969 from then-U.S. ambassador J. William Middendorf during a visit by the three Apollo 11 astronauts, part of their ?Giant Leap? goodwill tour after the first moon landing.
Middendorf, who lives in Rhode Island, told Dutch NOS news that he had gotten it from the U.S. State Department, but couldn?t recall the exact details.
The U.S. Embassy in the Hague said it was investigating the matter.
The museum had vetted the moon rock early on by checking with NASA, Van Gelder said.
The Dutch national museum says one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood. The museum acquired the rock after the death of a former prime minister, who received it in 1969 from the then-U.S. ambassador during a visit by the Apollo 11 astronauts. (AP Photo/Rijksmuseum)
She said the space agency told the museum then that it was possible the country had received a rock: NASA gave moon rocks to more than 100 countries in the early 1970s, but those were from later missions.
?Apparently no one thought to doubt it, since it came from the prime minister?s collection,? Van Gelder said.
The rock is not usually on display; the museum is primarily known for its paintings and other works of fine art by masters such as Rembrandt.
It was on show in 2006 and a space expert informed the museum it was unlikely NASA would have given away any moon rocks three months after Apollo returned to Earth.
Researchers from Amsterdam?s Free University said they could see at a glance the rock was not from the moon.
?It?s a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone,? Geologist Frank Beunk said in an article published by the museum.
He said it was worth no more than C50 ($70).
Article from: TorontoSun.com
Moon Hoax- H.P. Arnolds Moon Rocks
..................................
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast23feb_2/The Great Moon Hoax
Moon rocks and common sense prove Apollo astronauts really did visit the Moon.
.................................
http://phys.org/news/2009-09-moon-fake.htmlAstronauts who landed on the Moon collected 2,415 samples of Moon rocks weighing a total of 842 pounds (382 kilograms). Most of these rocks were collected during the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions. Image Credit: NASA
oh good I can still modify to add thishttp://www.collectspace.com/resources/moonrocks_goodwill.htmlWhere today are the Apollo 17
Goodwill Moon Rocks ?
Prior to the end of their third and final moonwalk, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt paused to make a special dedication:
Eugene Cernan: Houston, before we close out our [moonwalk], we understand that there are young people in Houston today who have been effectively touring our country, young people from countries all over the world, respectively, touring our country. They had the opportunity to watch the launch of Apollo 17; hopefully had an opportunity to meet some of our young people in our country. And we'd like to say first of all, welcome, we hope you enjoyed your stay.
Second of all, I think probably one of the most significant things we can think about when we think about Apollo is that it has opened for us -- "for us" being the world -- a challenge of the future. The door is now cracked, but the promise of the future lies in the young people, not just in America, but the young people all over the world learning to live and learning to work together. In order to remind all the people of the world in so many countries throughout the world that this is what we all are striving for in the future, Jack has picked up a very significant rock, typical of what we have here in the valley of Taurus-Littrow.
It's a rock composed of many fragments, of many sizes, and many shapes, probably from all parts of the Moon, perhaps billions of years old. But fragments of all sizes and shapes -- and even colors -- that have grown together to become a cohesive rock, outlasting the nature of space, sort of living together in a very coherent, very peaceful manner. When we return this rock or some of the others like it to Houston, we'd like to share a piece of this rock with so many of the countries throughout the world. We hope that this will be a symbol of what our feelings are, what the feelings of the Apollo Program are, and a symbol of mankind: that we can live in peace and harmony in the future.
Harrison Schmitt: A portion of [this] rock will be sent to a representative agency or museum in each of the countries represented by the young people in Houston today, and we hope that they -- that rock and the students themselves -- will carry with them our good wishes, not only for the new year coming up but also for themselves, their countries, and all mankind in the future.
Three months after Apollo 17 returned home in December 1972, then-U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered the distribution of fragments from the rock that Cernan and Schmitt collected, since labeled sample 70017, to 135 foreign heads of state, the 50 U.S. states and its provinces. Each rock, encased in an acrylic button, was mounted to a plaque with intended recepient's flag, also flown to the Moon.
A letter, signed by President Nixon, accompanied the samples that were transferred to foreign heads of state. Dated March 21, 1973, it read as follows (as reproduced from the National Archives):
The Apollo lunar landing program conducted by the United States has been brought to a successful conclusion. Men from the planet Earth have reached the first milestone in space. But as we stretch for the stars, we know that we stand also upon the shoulders of many men of many nations here on our own planet. In the deepest sense our exploration of the moon was truly an international effort.
It is for this reason that, on behalf of the people of the United States I present this flag, which was carried to the moon, to the State, and its fragment of the moon obtained during the final lunar mission of the Apollo program.
If people of many nations can act together to achieve the dreams of humanity in space, then surely we can act together to accomplish humanity's dream of peace here on earth. It was in this spirit that the Untied States of America went to the moon, and it is in this spirit that we look forward to sharing what we have done and what we have learned with all mankind.
Distribution of the Goodwill rock
Once gifted, each of the goodwill moon rock samples became the property of the recepient entity and therefore was no longer subject to being tracked by NASA. All other lunar samples' locations are well documented by the U.S. space agency to this day (with exception to similarly gifted Apollo 11 lunar sample displays).
As property of the nation or state, the goodwill rocks are now subject to the laws for public gifts as set by that country. In most cases, as in the United States, public gifts cannot be legally transferred to individual ownership without the passage of additional legislation.
Since 2002, collectSPACE has attempted to locate the current whereabouts of all the goodwill moon rocks. The following chart details those efforts.
Special gratitude is extended to former NASA Office of Inspector General special agent Joseph Gutheinz, who today as a professor at the University of Phoenix, Arizona, has challenged his students to locate the goodwill moon rocks.
Do you know the current status of a fragment of Sample 70017? Write us at moonrocks@collectspace.com
No. Nation / State Location / Status
Photo
Located By
291 China Beijing Planetarium, Beijing (displayed without its plaque or flag, only half of the moon rock sample is on exhibit; the other half was repurposed by China's space program for study)
X. Zeng
Photo: CCTV
lots more at link