A bag used to collect lunar samples during the first manned mission to the moon legally belongs to a US woman who bought it for $995 when it was mistakenly sold during a government auction, a judge has ruled.
Judge J. Thomas Marten said he doesn't have the authority to reverse the sale of the bag used during the Apollo 11 moon mission in July 1969, even though it shouldn't have gone up for auction.
The white bag, which has lunar material embedded in its fabric and which the government considers "a rare artifact, if not a national treasure," was mistakenly sold as part of a criminal case against Max Ary, the former director of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Centre.
Ary was convicted in November 2005 of stealing and selling museum artifacts, including some that were on loan from NASA.
Investigators found the Apollo 11 lunar bag in 2003 during a search of Ary's garage.
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The government contends that due to a mix up in inventory lists and item numbers, the bag was mistakenly thought to be a different bag which Ary had sold in 2001.
The US Attorney's Office wanted Marten to rescind the Apollo 11 bag's sale to Illinois woman Nancy Carlson.
When she bought the bag, Carlson only knew that it had been used in a space flight, but not which one.
But Marten ruled that the government obtained title to the bag and sold it to a good faith purchaser in a sale according to law, he noted.
NASA learned that the Apollo 11 bag had been sold without notice or permission when Carlson sent it to NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston for authentication.
Carlson separately sued NASA in June in a federal court in Illinois, seeking the return of the bag.
But Marten stopped short of ordering NASA to return the bag, saying such a motion must be filed in the district where the property was seized.
