Auction of moon pieces

1994/12/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronautika

In December of last year three small specimens were sold from the pavement of the Moon, which did not exceed 0.2 kilos, for 65 million pesetas (or 2.6 million pounds), that is, they were paid a thousand times more expensive than the diamond of the same weight.

These small specimens of the Moon were collected by the Soviet automatic probe Luna 16 and are two regolith crystals and a little quartz. They were transferred to Earth in 1970, along with the 100 grams collected from the Reproductive Sea.

If there were buyers, samples of 381 kilos brought to Earth at this price on Apollo missions would cost 95 billion pesetas (or 5 billion pounds). To travel to the Moon or Mars would not be a bad help!