Dust-up over moon bag ends with a friendly relinquishing
NASA ordered to return artifact after woman sued for rights
More than 40 years after it went to the moon and back, and after a year of legal wrangling,a historic lunar bag is back in the hands of the Chicago woman who owns it.
Nancy Lee Carlson, a collector of space memorabilia, met with lawyers and security personnel Monday in Building 110 at the Johnson Space Center for the handoff that was marked with grace and the requisite gravitas, according to Joseph Gutheinz, a lunar rock expert present for the 10:30 a.m. change of custody.
Gutheinz represented Carlson on behalf of the Gutheinz Law Firm and brought along his 15-yearold granddaughter, Emma, to take film footage of the transfer.
Carlson inspected the bag and noted that a rip across the bottom of the bag was larger than when she sent it to NASA for testing in August 2015.
“It’s part of its history. It makes it more interesting to a collector. I don’t think it diminishes the bag,” Gutheinz said.
A security guard from a firm hired by Carlson put it in a metallic envelope and left in an unmarked car. Carlson and her son, Leo, left NASA in their own car, headed for Chicago.
Carlson’s lawyer on the custody issue, Christopher M. McHugh, said he expected Carlson would make her plans for the artifact known at a later date.
The round bag is about the size of a dinner plate. It was used by the Apollo 11 crew as an exterior bag to carry moon rocks and still has traces of moon dust inside.
Carlson bought the bag “fair and square” for $995 at an online government auction, lawyers agreed.
She sent it to NASA for testing in 2015, where scientists determined it was from the original moon landing in 1969, and delayed its return. So she sued in federal court.
A Kansas judge ruled that the bag belonged to Carlson and left it up to a federal judge in Houston to enforce the ruling.
U.S. District Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore in Houston on Friday ordered NASA to return the bag.