[meteorite-list] Apollo Moon Rock Is Returned to Honduras

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:29:59 2004
Message-ID: <200309232207.PAA01154_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.space.com/news/honduras_moon_030923.html

Apollo Moon Rock Is Returned to Honduras
Associated Press
23 September 2003

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Apollo moon rock that was given to Honduras in 1973
only to later disappear was formally returned to the Honduran ambassador
Monday after NASA undercover agents recovered it from the black market by
running a sting operation.

The rock, mounted in a clear sphere on a wooden plaque bearing the Honduran
flag, was given to the president of Honduras in 1973 by President Nixon. The
plaque was on display in the presidential palace in Honduras for years, but
then disappeared sometime between 1990 and 1994.

It was rediscovered in 1998 when Joseph Richard Gutheinz, an agent of the
inspector general's office in the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, and other federal officers staged an elaborate sting
designed to smoke out dealers in black-market lunar rocks.

Gutheinz said he and his team ran a newspaper ad offering to buy moon rocks
and a dealer in Miami responded by offering to the sell the lunar specimen
for $5 million. After two months of negotiation, Gutheinz was finally
escorted to a bank vault lock box and shown the moon rock plaque. He and a
Customs agent seized the item on the spot.

A federal court later held that the moon rock and plaque rightfully belonged
to Honduras.

Gutheinz said he could not say how the lunar sample disappeared from
Honduras and turned up in a Miami bank vault, but that no criminal charges
were filed against the dealer who claimed ownership.

On Monday, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe presented the recovered lunar
rock to Honduran Ambassador Mario Canahuati.

O'Keefe said the recovery of the moon specimen was a tribute to the
international cooperation of law enforcement officials, calling the plaque
``truly historic and unique.''

Canahuati said the rock and plaque would be returned to Honduras and put on
display in a safe location where it would receive ``the respect it
deserves.''

Gutheinz, now retired, said the plaque is the same that Nixon gave to the
Hondurans in 1973. The only change, he said, was that a transparent sphere
containing the thimble-sized rock had been cleaned so that the lunar sample
could be seen more clearly.

The rock was brought from the moon in 1972 by the crew of Apollo 17, the
last of the Apollo moon-landing missions. It was one of many moon samples
given to nations of the world by the United States.
Received on Tue 23 Sep 2003 06:07:31 PM PDT