A bag from the historic Apollo 11 to the Moon has been ruled to belong to a woman who unknowingly bought it. Items from the Apollo 11 mission are considered as a US national treasure. Now the buyer keeps the Apollo 11 bag sold by mistake.
The bag originally was part of the property seized from Max Ary. Ary was a director of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center. He was convicted of stealing and then selling museum artefacts. The bag has been in his possession when it was seized by the government in 2003.
However, the bag has been misidentified and then sold it off to auction. Nancy Carlson was able to buy the bag for $995. Carlson didn't know from what space mission the bag came from, though she was aware that it came from some space mission.
NASA contends that it wasn't aware or agreed to have the bag sold, according to Phys Org. Carlson has sent the bag to the NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to have it identified. The bag has not been returned to her yet.
In the court ruling, Judge J. Thomas Marten of the US District Court in Wichita said that he doesn't have the authority to reverse the sale of the bag. The judge though has stopped short of saying that NASA should return the bag to Carlson. In essence, though Carlson legally owns the bag, NASA still has the bag in its possession.
For the bag to be returned, it has been suggested that Carlson must file a motion from where the bag was seized. In June Carlson has filed a suit against NASA in Illinois to have the bag returned. The Apollo 11 mission bag has a lunar material embedded in its fabric, as KMBC News reports. The US government considers the bag to be a rare artifact.
For now, the bag stays with NASA until a ruling is made on whether the bag should be returned to Carlson. But then the buyer keeps Apollo 11 bag sold by mistake in some way. Earlier one of the pioneers of the US space missions, John Glenn, has passed away.
