Moon Dust Being Sold By NASA Holds A Rather Unsavory Secret

When NASA visited the moon in 1969 on the Apollo 11 mission, they brought back some moon dust with them. Although it was in very limited quantity, some of that dust is now up for sale via auction but it holds a secret that really should be known.

Neil Armstrong was one of the astronauts that walked on the moon during that NASA mission. He may have actually touched the dust that is now being auctioned off, but the dust has been through the wringer, so to speak.

In an effort to test the dust, they fed it to roaches as part of an experiment. They wanted to see if the dust made them sick or not. This was done because astronauts were being exposed to substances that were not on earth, so they wanted to make sure it wouldn’t make the astronauts sick.

After three cockroaches ate the moon dust, they were killed and dissected. The dust was removed from their stomachs to make sure that the cockroaches didn’t experience any toxic symptoms to it.

Now that the moon dust has been used as part of that experiment, it is being auctioned off and the bidding may just get out of hand. In fact, the starting bid was $10,000, and experts are thinking that it will eventually sell for $400,000.

According to collectSPACE, the executive vice president of the auction house, Bobby Livingston, had the following to say: “Whenever we represent something from Apollo 11 it is obviously thrilling because it is the most important mission, but when you get something like cockroaches that were fed lunar material, it just shows how diverse the Apollo program was.”

The person who wins the bid for the dust will receive it along with the roach carcasses.