WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A bag carried to the moon aboard the Apollo 11 spacecraft and used for the first sample of lunar material is at the center a legal fight after the government mistakenly sold it during the criminal case against the former director of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center. The white bag — which was flown to the moon on Apollo 11 in June 1969 and has lunar material embedded in its fabric — is "a rare artifact, if not a national treasure," the government said. The dispute is the latest legal twist in the case of Max Ary, the founder and longtime director of the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson who was convicted in November 2005 for stealing and selling museum artifacts. The lunar bag was discovered in 2003 during the execution of a search warrant in a box located in Ary's garage. The bag was sold at a government auction on Feb. 15, 2015 for $995 to Nancy Carlson in Inverness, Illinois. NASA learned the Apollo 11 bag had been sold without notice or permission when Carlson sent it to NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston for authentication. Carlson separately sued NASA in June in a federal court in Illinois, seeking the return of the bag. On Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney's Office asked a federal judge to set aside the final forfeiture order and rescind the bag's sale, saying that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was not properly notified of its forfeiture because the bag was misidentified. Apparently, two lunar bags were confused as one and the same after inventory identification numbers of them were combined on spreadsheets, the government said. The other bag was an Apollo 17 lunar sample bag that was flown to the lunar surface aboard the Lunar Module Challenger. That bag was sold by Ary at a 2001 auction for $24,150, and it was later recovered by the government during its investigation. Ary, who was president and CEO of the Cosmosphere from 1976 to 2002, was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $132,274 in restitution. Ary was released on good behavior in 2010, having served about 70 percent of his sentence. He has always maintained his innocence, saying he accidentally mixed museum artifacts with ones he collected and sold privately from his home.
– A priceless bag used during the first moon walk was accidentally sold at a government auction, and is now the center of a legal dispute, the AP reports. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin tucked moon rocks into the white sack they took with them during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. After discovering the bag was hawked last year, the government is now scrambling to reverse the sale. The bag is embedded with space material and is "a rare artifact, if not a national treasure," officials say. Although a clerical error was to blame for the sale, the bag caper dates back to the case brought against Max Ary, the ex-director of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, who was convicted in 2005 of stealing and selling museum artifacts. The Apollo 11 bag was among hundreds of items found during a search of his garage. Then the government accidentally sold the bag at auction in 2015. Nancy Carlson, the Illinois woman who bought it for $995, sent it to NASA to confirm it was the real deal. It was—and surprised NASA officials kept it instead of returning it, touching off a legal fight. It turns out the bag was given the same inventory identification number as a similar one used on the final Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the Christian Science Monitor reports. (Ary had sold that one in 2001 for $24,150. It was eventually recovered.) Carlson sued in June to have the bag returned to her, but federal prosecutors are asking a judge to rescind the sale. Astronauts called the lunar bags the “purse.” After Armstrong’s death in 2012, his widow found one of them, filled with space-related objects, in a closet.