A truly rare item is all set to go under the hammer at American auction house RR Auction – extracts of moon dust digested by cockroaches. As bizarre as it sounds, the item description on the RR Auction website goes on to say that it was extracted from German cockroaches after they were fed lunar soil material.
The lunar soil (or moon dust) in this case was extracted during the Apollo 11 mission and it was fed to cockroaches to observe its “potential pathological” effect on them.
Weighing 40 milligrams, the moon dust encased in a glass vial is expected to fetch US$ 400,000 (approximately Rs 3.12 crore). Its current bid stands at US$ 30,000 (approximately Rs 23.44 lakh). The bidding is open till June 23.
These samples were collected from Dr Marion Brooks, an entomologist from the University of St Paul, who was contracted by US space agency Nasa to perform the experiment. The winning bidder will get a letter of provenance from Dr Brooks’s daughter along with 66 glass slides that were used in the experiment.
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PremiumMoon dust eaten by cockroaches as part of a scientific experiment on Apollo 11 is expected to fetch as much as $400,000 at the ‘Remarkable Rarities’ auction in Boston. Read more https://t.co/4py2QRD8XE pic.twitter.com/gLiowo4YOw
— Reuters Asia (@ReutersAsia) June 10, 2022
This is not the first auction to sell rare space artefacts. In February this year, several pieces of meteorites and other space rocks were auctioned by British auction house Christie’s. Among the auctioned items was Allende, a meteorite considered “the oldest matter humankind can touch” as it is estimated to have formed 4.56 billion years ago.
