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On Wednesday, August 22, 2018, the photo shows moon rocks embedded in acrylic and mounted on a wooden plaque at the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City. A former NASA investigator, who has spent more than a decade following the missing lunar rocks, is getting closer to his goal of finding the 50 lunar samples available in the United States after Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. In recent weeks, two other lunar rocks that fell from the radar after the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 were located in Louisiana and Utah. (AP Photo / Rick Bowmer)
A strange thing happened after Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew came back from the moon with lunar rocks: most of the memories given to all American states have disappeared. Now, after years of research, a former NASA investigator is getting closer to his goal of locating all 50's.
In the last few weeks, two of the rocks that fell off the radar after the 1969 mission were in Louisiana and Utah, leaving only useless memories in New York and Delaware.
Lawyer and lunar rock chaser Joseph Gutheinz says he "blows his mind", that the rocks have not been neatly indexed and saved by some of the states that have received them, but he hopes that the last two will be located before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission next summer.
"It's a tangible piece of history," he said. "Neil Armstrong's first mission was to go down and pick up pebbles and dust in case they needed to do an emergency takeoff."
The administration of President Richard Nixon has introduced the tiny lunar samples to all 50 states and 135 countries, but few have been officially registered and most have disappeared, Gutheinz said.
Each state got a tiny sample covered with acrylic and mounted on a wooden plaque, with the state flag. Some have been placed in museums, while others have been exhibited in state capitals. But almost no state has recorded them in an archival document, and many have lost track of them, he said.
On Thursday, August 23, 2018, the photo, Lindsie Smith, of the Clark Planetarium, holds acrylic-coated moon stones mounted on a wooden plate at the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City. A former NASA investigator, who has spent more than a decade following the missing lunar rocks, is getting closer to his goal of finding the 50 lunar samples available in the United States after Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. In recent weeks, two other lunar rocks that fell from the radar after the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 were located in Louisiana and Utah. (AP Photo / Rick Bowmer)
When Gutheinz began looking for them in 2002, he estimates that 40 states had lost track of the rocks.
"I think part of it was that, honestly, we thought the return to the moon would happen regularly," said Gutheinz. But there were only five other trips before the last moon landing, Apollo 17, in 1972.
On the rocks of Apollo 11 given to other countries, about 70% are not counted, he added.
The US government has also sent a second set of good-looking moonstones to states and other nations after the Apollo 17 mission, and many of them have also disappeared, he added.
NASA did not follow them after giving them to the Nixon administration for distribution, said chief historian Bill Barry, but the space agency would be happy to see them locate.
On this Wednesday, August 22, 2018, photo, shows moon rocks locked in acrylic at the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City. A former NASA investigator, who has spent more than a decade following the missing lunar rocks, is getting closer to his goal of finding the 50 lunar samples available in the United States after Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. Each state got a tiny sample covered with acrylic and mounted on a wooden plaque, with the state flag. (AP Photo / Rick Bowmer)
Gutheinz began his career as an investigator for NASA, where he found illicit sellers asking for millions of rocks on the black market. Authentic moonstones are considered national treasures and can not be sold legally in the United States, he said.
He told NASA that gifts to the states were missing, but he only started his hunt after leaving the agency.
Now a lawyer in the Houston area, he is also a college instructor and has asked for help from his students. The recording of their discoveries on the location of moon gems discovered in a database.
Most of the Apollo 11 rocks were found in unexpected places: with former governors of West Virginia and Colorado, in a military artefact storage building in Minnesota; and with a former crab boat captain of the TV show "Deadliest Catch" in Alaska.
In New York, state museum officials have no record of Apollo 11 rock in that state. In Delaware, the sample was stolen from its national museum on September 22, 1977. The police were contacted, but it was never found.
This Wednesday, August 22, 2018, the photo shows a plate mounted on a wooden plate that contains acrylic-coated lunar rocks at the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City. A former NASA investigator, who has spent more than a decade following the missing lunar rocks, is getting closer to his goal of finding the 50 lunar samples available in the United States after Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. In recent weeks, two other lunar rocks that fell from the radar after the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 were located in Louisiana and Utah. (AP Photo / Rick Bowmer)
The territory of the US Virgin Islands, meanwhile, can confirm that he received a stone of goodwill, although the University of the Virgin Islands later received Apollo 11 stones for scientific research, said the conservative Chief Julio Encarnacion III.
In other states, although Gutheinz has recently hit the market. Baton Rouge's Advocate newspaper spotted Louisiana's Apollo 11 lunar rock in early August after a call from Gutheinz.
In Utah, the state history division had no record of the sample, but the Associated Press confirmed that it was stored at the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City.
The officials present will be able to exhibit it as part of the celebrations celebrating the anniversary of Apollo 11 next year, which Gutheinz hopes to see everywhere.
"The people of the world deserve this," he said. "They deserve to see something that our astronauts have accomplished and to be part of it."
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