Mare Imbrium & The Postage Stamp Incident

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'Mare Imbrium & The Postage Stamp Incident'

Mare Imbrium & The Postage Stamp Incident

[Public Domain] 13 Oct 2014 Dylan O'Donnell
CATEGORY : Astrophotography
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Here is a colour enhanced version near the Mare Imbrium region of the moon – a wide, relatively flat area that has been visited by the Americans, the Russians and more recently a Chinese robot.

On the Apollo 15 mission that flew near here in 1971, the astronauts took 398 postage stamps + covers on board the rocket without telling NASA. 100 were sold to the collector who provided them and the 298 remaining were confiscated by NASA leading to a court case in 1983. The astronauts successfully sued their former employer for their return, though it affected a few of their careers. One lost his spot on the next mission to the moon, and another resigned.

Today the stamps can be sold for as much as $15,000 USD, partly due to this story.

They took something else up to Mare Imbrium without telling NASA, and left it there.

A small figurine placed face down in the moon dust, with a list of the names of the fellow astronauts before them who lost their lives on or off the job.