Some stories about space exploration involve rockets and record-breaking speeds. This one involves a filing error. In February 2015, the US Marshals Service put a batch of seized items up for online auction. Tucked among them was a scuffed, zippered pouch made of white beta cloth, the kind of material NASA used on spacesuits in the 1960s. It was labeled, almost casually, as having flown on a lunar mission. Nobody selling it seemed to grasp what that meant.
Nancy Lee Carlson, a lawyer from Inverness, Illinois, with a side interest in geology and space memorabilia, placed a winning bid of $995. She knew the bag had some connection to a spaceflight. She had no idea it was the actual sample-return bag Neil Armstrong used on the surface of the Moon during Apollo 11, humanity's first crewed lunar landing, in July 1969.
