HOUSTON — Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell and a few of his fellow Apollo astronauts were in Washington Jan. 9, where they met with NASA officials to address “misunderstandings” over the ownership of the mementos they kept from their missions.
Their meeting at NASA headquarters with Administrator Charles Bolden, a former shuttle astronaut himself, came after the space agency questioned the $388,375 sale of one of Lovell’s Apollo 13-flown checklists in December.
NASA’s request for the proof of ownership for the 70-page, ring-bound book, along with other artifacts — including two pieces of equipment offered by Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart — resulted in Dallas-based Heritage Auctions halting the transfer of the items to their winning bidders.
“These are American heroes, fellow astronauts, and personal friends who have acted in good faith,” Bolden said of Lovell, Schweickart and the other astronauts who joined them at the meeting. “We have committed to work together to find the right policy and legal paths forward to address outstanding ownership questions.”
NASA’s inquiry and the resulting hold that it placed on the checklist’s record-setting sale was first reported by collectSPACE.com Jan. 3. The space agency’s general counsel first informed the auction house of its concerns Dec. 1, the day after the sale had been held.
Joining Lovell and Schweickart at the Jan. 9 meeting were moonwalkers Charlie Duke and Gene Cernan, as well as other former astronauts’ representatives.
Fundamental misunderstandings
Although the former astronauts and Bolden did not reach a solution during the meeting, they recognized the need to work together to resolve this issue.
“We discussed how to resolve the misunderstandings and ownership questions regarding flight mementos and other artifacts,” Bolden said in a Jan. 9 statement. “I believe there have been fundamental misunderstandings and unclear policies regarding the items from the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs.
“NASA appreciates the position of the astronauts, learning institutions, museums, and others who have these historic artifacts in personal and private collections.”
At potential issue are not just the four artifacts that NASA questioned from the November auction but all of the flight-used equipment that the astronauts retained after their missions in the 1960s and 1970s. In the decades since, the retired astronauts have donated some of their mementos to museums and sold others to private collectors.
Those donations and sales went largely unchallenged by NASA until recently. If NASA’s independent investigative arm, the Office of Inspector General, were to decide that Lovell’s and Schweickart’s artifacts were still government property, it could raise concerns about all the artifacts that were previously transferred by the astronauts.
Bolden said that he recognized the need to clarify NASA’s artifact policies as promptly as is possible.
“We [will] explore all policy, legislative and other legal means to resolve these questions expeditiously,” he said, “and clarify the ownership of these mementos, and ensure that appropriate artifacts are preserved and available for display to the American people.”
Exploring the evidence
That this has become an issue now, four decades later, is due in part to the way in which mission-used equipment was given to the astronauts soon after their missions. In many cases, no formal title transfer was ever drafted as NASA’s policies concerning the mission mementos were largely unwritten at the time.
Robert Z. Pearlman is the editor of collectSPACE.com.
