Thu, Mar 04, 2004
Space Crime Doesn't Pay
A tiny lunar rock that
was stolen from Honduras in the early 1990s was presented to
Honduran President Ricardo Maduro on Saturday, at a ceremony to
mark the rock's return. "Thank you for returning this material that
is so valuable to the world," said Maduro, in a ceremony attended
by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and Peruvian astronaut Carlos
Noriega.
NASA had turned over the moon rock to the Honduran ambassador in
September after a federal court held the chunk rightfully belonged
to Honduras. The rock was transported from the moon aboard Apollo
17. U.S. President Richard M. Nixon gave the 1.142-gram chunk to
his counterpart, general Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, in 1973.
For a while, the rock was displayed in the presidential
residence, mounted inside a transparent globe on a wooden plaque
bearing the Honduran flag. But it disappeared sometime between 1990
and 1994 and was not recovered until 1998 in the United States,
where federal agents staged an elaborate sting designed to trap
dealers in black-market lunar rocks. The sting started out as an
effort to catch crooks selling fakes, recalled Joseph Gutheinz, a
retired senior special agent for NASA's Office of Inspector
General.
"We were looking for bogus moon rocks," said Gutheinz on
Saturday, speaking by phone from Houston. "It took us two months
just to talk the (seller) into seeing it in a secure vault."
Confiscated from a bank vault in Miami and tested for authenticity
by NASA, the moon rock stayed in the United States during a
four-year court battle over its possession. No criminal charges
were filed against the dealer who claimed ownership. "To bring (the
moon rock) back to a country that really appreciated that it was
from the Apollo - everyone was ecstatic that we got it back,"
Gutheinz said.
The rock, which measures about one-half inch (12 mm) in length
will be placed on public exhibition in the Centro Interactivo
Chiminike, an education center in Tegucigalpa that receives
hundreds of young student visitors a day.
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