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Stolen and missing moon rocks
Of the 270 Apollo 11 Moon Rocks and Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks that were given to the nations of the world by the Nixon Administration, approximately 180 are currently unaccounted for. Many of the Moon rocks that are accounted for have been locked away in storage for decades. The location of the rocks has been tracked by researchers and hobbyists because of their rarity and the difficulty of obtaining more. Moon rocks have been subjects of theft and forgery as well.
==Investigations==
In 1998, a unique federal law enforcement undercover operation was created to identify and arrest individuals selling bogus Moon rocks. This sting operation was known as Operation Lunar Eclipse. Originally two undercover agents were involved in this sting, Senior Special Agent Joseph Gutheinz of NASA's Office of Inspector General (NASA OIG), posing as Tony Coriasso, and Inspector Bob Cregger of the United States Postal Inspection Service, posing as John Marta. This sting operation was later expanded to include Agents from the United States Customs Service, namely, Special Agent Dwight Weikel and Special Agent Dave Atwood. Agents posted a quarter page advertisement in ''USA Today'' asking for Moon rocks. The Agents were targeting individuals selling bogus Moon rocks, which con artists sell to the elderly and to space enthusiasts. The sting operation was led by NASA OIG Senior Special Agent Joseph Gutheinz. For the first time in history the sting operation recovered an Apollo era Moon rock, the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock. This Moon rock had been given to Honduras by President Nixon, fallen into private hands, and then offered to the Agents for $5 million. In order to recover this Moon rock, the agents had to come up with the $5 million requested by the seller. Billionaire and one-time Presidential Candidate H. Ross Perot was asked by one of the agents to put up the money, and did so.
After leaving NASA for a teaching position at the University of Phoenix, in Arizona, Gutheinz challenged his criminal justice graduate students to locate the goodwill Moon rocks.
He subsequently extended this project to also cover the missing Apollo 11 Moon rocks President Nixon gave to the states and nations of the world in 1969. Hundreds of graduate students have participated in this project from 2002 to the present and while many Moon rocks have been found, others are now known to be missing, stolen, or destroyed. Gutheinz patterned this college project after NASA's earlier Operation Lunar Eclipse, which he had participated in. Beginning in 2002, his graduate students began reporting to him that both the Cyprus Apollo 11 Moon rock (which is actually a collection of lunar dust in a Lucite ball) and Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock (a pebble-size Moon rock) were missing. Operation Lunar Eclipse and the Moon Rock Project were the subject of the book ''The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks'' by Joe Kloc.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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