NASA objects lost in the middle of poor record keeping

(CNN) – The agency's monitoring concluded that NASA has lost invaluable remnants of the history of space, largely because of poor record keeping and its tracking.

The Inspector General recently concluded that "NASA does not have adequate processes in place to identify or manage its assets."

This led NASA to lose track of flying objects in space, such as an "Apollo 11 lunar collection bag containing lunar dust particles" and other artifacts. Historical significance, such as a lunar vehicle prototype that was sold to a shipyard.

NASA told the Office of the Inspector General in a memo that it would develop better procedures for dealing with the historical elements by the spring of May 2020. The agency n & # 39; He did not immediately reply to CNN for comments.

The rover is presented "in a residential area of ​​Alabama" and was spotted by an air force historian. When the government made contact with him, the owner "expressed his interest in the return of the vehicle to NASA".

But the agency lost track of the vehicle as it did not follow.

"After waiting more than four months the decision of the Agency, the interested party sold the rover to a scrap processing company," said the Inspector General. "NASA officials later offered to buy the vehicle, but the scrap owner refused and, realizing its historical value, sold the vehicle at auction for an undisclosed amount."

In another case, NASA lost track of a bag containing lunar material, which was eventually sold for $ 1.8 million.

The "Federal Bureau of Investigation" seized the "Apollo 11 lunar collection bag" from the home of a former Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center general manager during a criminal investigation, "discovered The GI then sold at an auction of the Marshals Service. NASA learned of the existence of the bag in 2015 when the buyer asked the agency to check its authenticity, but a judge denied NASA's request to take possession of the bag and put it up for auction.

At the end of the Space Shuttle program, NASA has improved its processes for tracking historical artifacts, the report says. But that did not help the agency recover artifacts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

Articles from that era, the report said, appeared in online auctions because "NASA donated goods to astronauts and other employees and contractors."

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