[meteorite-list] Moon Dust

From: JoshuaTreeMuseum <joshuatreemuseum_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:04:59 -0400
Message-ID: <A40E3A8C911A4566BC6A859DFC7D21C7_at_ET>

All the AP people, or whoever wrote the original article, had to do was add
the simple caveat that all non-Antarctic lunar meteorites and meteoritical
materials are perfectly legal to possess, buy and sell. A simple distinction
between the legality of non-Antactic lunar meteorites and the illegality of
NASA moon rocks would have done it. These people are, after all, journalism
majors, unschooled in the esoteric, highly specialized field of
meteoritics.

Returning to the gist of the thread, it looks like the Feds and NASA are
cracking down on the private possession of lunar dust retrieved from space
paraphenalia. NASA workers regularly used strips of tape to clean lunar
dust off space suits before they were returned to their manufacturer for
inspection and repair.

The Slezak lunar dust and other dust collected by Florian Noller from a moon
bag carried on Apollo 16 has been in a gray area, apparently up until now.
Unless the Feds are talking about some of the smuggled dust from the space
suits. Sounds like they're talking about the Slezak dust which Noller has
openly sold in the past. I think he was taken in for questioning and maybe
charged but it came to nothing and he kept the dust. Looks like now they
want all the dust for themselves.

Phil Whitmer
Received on Sat 25 Jun 2011 12:04:59 AM PDT