More than 50 years after Neil Armstrong collected moon dust on the Apollo 11 mission, an anonymous buyer purchased the sample for just over $500,000 at an auction. Bonhams, an international auction house, completed the sale on Wednesday for $504,375, according to its site. The lunar dust is the first sample from the mission that could be legally sold. Adam Stackhouse, a Bonhams specialist, told CNN it was hard to determine its value."This estimate gives it a sense of importance," he told the outlet, "but it's really difficult to say where it will sell."According to CNN, the estimate for the moon dust before the auction was between $800,000 and $1.2 million. The samples returned to Earth in 1969 and were taken from the seams of a bag where the first lunar sample was placed, Space reported. They were sold in 2015 during a government forfeiture auction and a slew of lawsuits followed after NASA refused to give them up."This artifact was never meant to be owned by an individual," William Jeffs, the NASA spokesman for the astromaterials division, said in a statement in 2017. NASA eventually turned over the bag in 2017 after a court ruled against them and it was auctioned off for $1,812,500, according to Space. Stackhouse told National Geographic that seeing the bags dust today feels like "you’re close to that moment."“It’s like a time machine in a way.”Follow reporter Asha Gilbert @Coastalasha. Email: agilbert@usatoday.com.


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