Moon Dust Missing for 40 Years Is Found at Auction House (Time.com)

It was one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, and a lot of people wanted a piece of it. Now, some 40 years after moon dust brought back from the Apollo 11 mission went missing, it was recovered at a St. Louis auction house and returned to the Johnson Space Center in Houston this week.

"It's a speck - the size of a fingertip," said David Kols of Regency-Superior auction house, where the dust had been placed for sale. "But it's lunar material, and since we're not going back to the moon in my lifetime or yours, that makes it worth a lot to some people." (See TIME's special report on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.)

The U.S. attorney's office in St. Louis, which announced the recovery of the moon dust on June 23, said that investigators with NASA believed the dust had come from the film cartridge of a camera used by astronauts on humanity's first trip to the moon in 1969. The dust was lifted from the cartridge using a 1-in. (2.5 cm) piece of clear tape. Somehow, it reached the black market and was sold in 2001, NASA investigators believe, to a German collector who cut up the tape into tiny slivers rather than return it to the U.S. government.

When investigators from both NASA and the U.S. attorney's office noticed moon dust listed for sale in St. Louis, they shut down the transaction with the cooperation of the auction house and the seller. The widow trying to sell the dust - her name was not released - said she didn't know where her late husband had purchased it. She "immediately and graciously agreed to relinquish it back to the American people," the U.S. attorney's office said.

The auction house had estimated its value at $1,000 to $1,500. (See photos of Mercury.)

Preliminary testing by the Johnson Space Center's lab has concluded that the material in "all likelihood" is lunar, but final results will take a few weeks.

More than 800 lb. (363 kg) of moon rocks, pebbles, sand and dust were ferried back to Earth during the Apollo lunar missions, which ended in late 1972. The overwhelming majority of the material was kept for analysis, but a handful of samples were given to museums, individual states and foreign dignitaries. Some are now unaccounted for, and there are many fakes for sale. A moon rock given to Missouri during the administration of Governor Christopher "Kit" Bond, who was first elected in 1972, was found last year in a box of memorabilia when Bond cleaned out his office after four terms in the U.S. Senate. Bond promptly returned the rock to the current governor, Jay Nixon.

The story of the film canister and the stolen dust had been considered a hoax by some, U.S. attorney Rich Callahan said. This discovery, even a little speck, suggests the story is true - though you have to peer really, really close. "The truth is, it's not much to look at," said Callahan. "You have to believe it's there."

See amazing photos of the sun.

See photos of the moon's eclipse.

View this article on Time.com

Most Popular on Time.com:

View the original article here

Russian Space Oddity: Ground Control to Colonel Gaddafi (Time.com)

When the U.S. and France asked Russia last month to help mediate the war in Libya, they were probably not expecting a self-proclaimed emissary of alien life to show up in Tripoli for a meeting with Muammar Gaddafi. But on Sunday evening, as NATO air strikes continued on the Libyan capital, the besieged Colonel took the time to entertain a Russian politician named Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, best known for his claims that extraterrestrials took him on a mystical tour of the galaxy in their spaceship in 1997. Far from convincing Gaddafi to step down, the visit seemed geared toward giving him a confidence boost - and an unlikely lesson in the game of kings.

For the past 15 years, Ilyumzhinov has also presided over the world chess federation, known as FIDE, which makes him the first head of an international body to meet with Gaddafi since the U.N.-backed bombing campaign against him began in March. In a video shown on Libyan television on Sunday night, Ilyumzhinov praises Gaddafi's resilience. "It's a great honor for me to be here to see that you are very well, healthy, because many people... gave wrong information," he said in stilted English. (See what mediating in Libya could cost Medvedev.)

The two men then played a rather awkward game of chess. Allowed the first move, Gaddafi made a clumsy opening, nervously moving his pawn from F3 to F4, and Ilyumzhinov took the piece and moved it back for him. The game ended in a draw and a handshake for the cameras, after which Ilyumzhinov told reporters that Gaddafi had promised never to leave Libya, regardless of the West's support for the rebels battling to overthrow him. The two-hour chat, Ilyumzhinov said, was held not in an underground bunker, where many western experts had presumed Gaddafi to be hiding, but in "one of the administrative buildings in the Libyan capital."

The two-day visit, billed as an attempt to promote chess in Libya, had a clear diplomatic tint that seemed at cross-purposes with Russia's much-touted drive to mediate an end to Libyan conflict. On May 27, U.S. President Barack Obama asked his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev to help convince Gaddafi to cede power. The next week, Medvedev dispatched his Africa envoy, Mikhail Margelov, who told a news conference in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi on June 7 that Gaddafi must step down, as he "has lost his legitimacy after the first bullet shot against the Libyan people." But last week, Margelov returned to Moscow without ever meeting with Gaddafi.

Ilyumzhinov has now beaten him to it, a move that would have been unlikely, given its geopolitical significance, without at least tacit approval from the Kremlin. On Monday, Margelov, the Africa envoy, said he had discussed Ilyumzhinov's trip to Libya with him beforehand. "I advised him to play white, start with E2 to E4, and let Gaddafi know that his match is approaching the endgame," Margelov said on Monday. (See "Medvedev's Improbable Mission: Mediating Peace with Gaddafi.")

But if anything, Ilyumzhinov gave Gaddafi some badly needed encouragement, much as he had done by praising Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In an October interview with TIME, Ilyumzhinov said Hussein had been "a dear friend" whom he sorely missed, and he went on to denounce the West for pushing its values onto other countries - a very popular view among the Russian public and much of Moscow's political elite. "The western man is primitive in his thinking," Ilyumzhinov said. "If something doesn't fit into his scheme, even if it is an idea that is new and useful, it is easier to write it off as corrupt or insane."

Ilyumzhinov served as the head of the Russian republic of Kalmykia between 1993 and 2010. Four years into his tenure, which was stained by frequent allegations of corruption and mismanagement, he began to claim that he had been kidnapped by aliens who taught him how to save mankind from certain destruction. The planet Earth, he told TIME in October, was set to collide with the planet Nebiru, killing everyone on the planet, unless people cleansed their "aura" by playing more chess. The game would also allow humans to regain the powers of teleportation and telekinesis, which ancient civilizations possessed, Ilyumzhinov says.

None of his eccentricities, however, ever seemed to hurt his standing with the Kremlin. In 2005, then-President Vladimir Putin appointed Ilyumzhinov to another five-year term as the leader of Kalmykia, a poor and mostly Buddhist region in southern Russia, and Ilyumzhinov has been a dogged Putin ally ever since. In 2010, Ilyumzhinov struck a deal with the Kremlin to leave office, and was rewarded with Russia's support for his bid to get re-elected as the head of FIDE last year. (See photos of the battle for Libya.)

In his interview with TIME, he said he preferred the FIDE presidency to his governor's seat, because it was a global platform that allowed him to travel the world and meet with world leaders. "FIDE is very helpful in getting my messages across," he said. At the time, Ilyumzhinov was referring to the messages he says he learned from extraterrestrials. But on Sunday, his role as FIDE president allowed him to send the world another message: Gaddafi still has a few friends left on this planet and the Libyan strongman had no intention of giving up power. For the western powers eager to see Gaddafi deposed, it may have been better if Ilyumzhinov had stuck to his work on intergalactic conflicts and stayed clear of the earthly ones now unfolding in North Africa.

See TIME's special report: "The Middle East in Revolt."

See Yuri Kozyrev's multimedia presentation, "On Revolution Road."

View this article on Time.com

Most Popular on Time.com:

View the original article here