Moon Rocks Collected in 1970 Now Sell For $8,55,000 in New York

The rocks originally belonged to Nina Ivanovna Koroleva, widow of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who was the former director of the Soviet space program.

(Photo Courtesy: AFP)

Three moon rocks brought to Earth nearly half a century ago were sold for $8,55,000 in New York, Sotheby's said on Thursday, 29 November.

The rocks, collected by an unmanned Soviet Luna-16 Mission in 1970, were sold for nearly double the amount that was last paid ($442,500) for them by the present-day US sellers in a Sotheby's Russian space history sale in 1993, AFP reported.

The rocks originally belonged to Nina Ivanovna Koroleva, widow of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who was the former director of the Soviet space program.

Korolev was a rocket engineer and a spacecraft designer, and the mastermind behind the Soviet space program during the 1950s and 60s, the report said.

His work made the first human earth orbit possible, but he did not live long enough to see the lunar soil samples returned from the moon. He died in 1966.

According to the report, the rock sample was collected in September 1970, when Luna-16 landed on the moon and drilled a 35-cm (14-inch) hole in the surface of the earth.

It is extremely rare for authentic lunar samples to come onto the market with all those collected by the Americans in the hands of the US government, not individuals, AFP quoted the auction house as saying.

“Space exploration is something that’s universal.” 

Sotheby’s expert Cassandra Hatton told AFP before the sale.

"Anybody can look up at the sky and get excited about it. So we have a lot of interest from around the world and in all age brackets. Moon rocks come with their own mythology. When you really think about the true cost ... many lives were lost attempting to get up there. The symbolism of that, the value is far greater than any dollar amount somebody would pay for it at auction," Hatton said.

(With inputs from AFP)