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Court to Decide If Man Can Keep His Moon Rock
Joe Gutheinz, a former senior investigator for NASA's Office of Inspector General, has made it his goal to collect all 230 moon rocks presented by the US to governments around the world, and put them in a museum. Deadliest Catch Captain Coleman Anderson wants to keep his little piece of the moon. Anderson says he found the rock in the trash mixed with debris following a fire at an Anchorage museum in 1973. He's kept it as a good luck charm ever since. "Our astronauts and their descendants are not permitted to have an Apollo 11-era moon rock to sell for their own enrichment and neither should a private citizen who acquired one in a less-noble manner," Gutheinz said. An Alaskan judge will now decide who legally owns the rock.
The museum wasn't the property owner, but merely a custodian of an item which is owned by NASA and was on loan to them. That they improperly disposed of it, does not terminate NASA's ownership.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
But that's what you get for trying, sued
So that's why after he rescued it he immediately returned it to the relevant interested parties rather than keeping it for himself? Oh wait...