International search for missing Moon rocks

NASA has recently disclosed that several Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions have gone missing. Of the 370 Moon rocks given to the 50 American states and 135 countries, 184 are missing.

Rock was picked up from the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 and the last two astronauts on the Moon, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17, picked up a rock and brought it back to Earth in 1972. President Richard Nixon broke up the rocks and distributed them as a gift of good will.

24 rocks are lost, stolen or unaccounted for in the US with 160 missing from around the world. Rocks are missing from Romania, Ireland and Libya.

Now a former NASA agent has made it his mission to find the missing rocks. Known as the “moon rock hunter”, Joseph Gutheinz Jr. ran an undercover sting operation known as Operation Lunar Eclipse with the aim of recovering the missing rocks.

Gutheinz has tried many methods to find the Moon rocks, with the assistance of students from the University of Phoenix and Alvin Community College, Texas. Together they have managed to find 77 of the missing rocks.

In an attempt to lure out black market Moon rock vendors, Gutheinz even placed an advert in USA Today pretending to want to buy rocks. Alan Rosen came forward claiming to have the Honduras Moon rock and wanted to sell it for £3.1m. After a five year investigation, the rock was retrieved by the American government and later returned to Honduras.

One Moon rock given to Ireland is now reportedly at the bottom of a dump. A fire at Dunsink Observatory, Dublin, where the rock was being held led to debris being cleared and disposed of. Among the debris was the Moon rock given to Ireland by the USA. Dr. Ian Elliot, who was at the observatory the night of the fire, believes a search for the Moon rock would be fruitless: “It is a very big dump, I am afraid. It is worse than a needle in a haystack – you would never find it.”

As well as being stolen, Moon rocks can go missing during revolutions, such as the Romanian Moon rock which went missing when the dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was executed. It is assumed that it has now been sold into a private collection.

Gutheinz plans to continue searching for the missing Moon rocks but accepts that some which have been sold into private collections may never be found but hopes to find some missing in Europe such as the Romanian one, and the rock given to Malta. The Maltese Moon rock was stolen from the Museum of Natural History.