Tek-Bull

Woman busted for trying to sell a Moon rock – apparently that’s highly illegal

So apparently it’s illegal to sell Moon Rocks, a woman was arrested earlier today for trying to sell a rare piece of a moon rock for $1.7 million, she was detained in a sting operation where the customer turned out to be an undercover NASA investigator.

The reason they are illegal to sell is because they are considered “national treasures” I wonder if Nicholas Cage is going to come out on this one. The gray rocks like the one on the picture to the bottom right were given to each U.S. state and to 136 different countries by President Richard Nixon. Each one of the rocks can sell for millions of dollars in the black market quite a hefty amount of money for something so tiny. I wonder how much the moon costs? Maybe I could take a trip to the moon in one of those Virgin Spacecraft take enough moon rocks to make me a kitchen counter top.

The woman who is not being identified was detained by Riverside County Sheriff’s department after NASA investigators confirmed that she was trying to sell the rock. The investigation was conducted over a period of several months.

The deal about this is that NASA doesn’t even know if it’s a real moon rock or not, they still have to check it against their “rock database” to see if it’s real. A lunar Curator in a special lab at Johnson Space Center will be testing it out later in the week. The minerals contained in the rock are Armalcolite, which is named after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.

The woman has not been arrested or charged, yet, but she could be charged with Theft, if the rock is real, or Fraud if the rock is fake, so either way, she’s in a whole lotta trouble. About 840 pounds of “lunar rocks” were brought back to earth by NASA’s Apollo lunar landing from 1969-1972, and a recent count of 10 states and almost 90 countries have lost their shares of the rocks… that’s over $100 million dollars in Lunar Rocks. Nasa has about 84 % of the rocks now, the rest are on display or loaned out for study, and out of that, some of them are lost.

So I wonder if you can sell Meteorites? I saw a show once where people were tracking down space rocks to sell. Maybe that’s why it was shut down

Via: Yahoo