2021 | Louisiana’s Missing Moon Rock

Man in Florida finds historic Goodwill Rock in a box of old plaques

5 min readJun 17, 2023

4 MINUTE READ | NUMBER 9
Originally published at https://lahistory.substack.com.

While driving past the John C. Stennis Space Center, located just over the Mississippi-Louisiana Line, I commented on how people mistakenly associate NASA with New Orleans when it was clearly in Mississippi. My remark was met with laughter from everyone in the car, and my face turned several shades of red after learning that although the Stennis Space Center is indeed in Mississippi, NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility is located just outside New Orleans. Intrigued, I consulted Google where I stumbled upon a fascinating story about missing moon rocks, which quickly diverted my attention and led me down a new path that ended with this story.

Eugene A. Cernan on the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission. [NASA]

2021

A wooden plaque at a garage sale caught the attention of a Florida gun collector. The man, who wished to remain anonymous, wanted the plaque for its wood to make gun stocks. He purchased the plaque and threw it into a box with others he had bought. Years later, he discovered something special when he retrieved the plaque for a project.

The plaque, measuring 10 inches by 14 inches, had a small lucite ball embedded at the top, containing a lunar rock sample. This rock was a portion of a larger rock from Taurus Littrow Valley of the Moon collected by Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972.

The Goodwill Mission

The Apollo 17 mission, launched on December 7, 1972, was the final crewed mission to the Moon. It returned to Earth twelve days later with a remarkable 772 pounds of lunar samples. These consisted of core samples from deep within the lunar surface and surface samples from the top layer.

President Richard Nixon requested NASA to prepare 200 plaques, each containing a small piece of a core sample from the Apollo 17 mission. These rocks were encased in clear acrylic balls and mounted on wooden plaques. The plaques also featured flags from recipient countries or states, symbolizing peace and cooperation.

Gift to Louisiana

Records indicate that in September 1973, Captain Charles Conrad, Captain Joe Kerwin, and Captain Paul Weitz, the first Skylab astronauts who had recently returned to Earth, presented Governor Edwin Edwards with the moon rock.

The rock then toured the state, visiting various festivals and museums, before eventually returning to Baton Rouge to the Governor’s Mansion. In 1982, Louisiana’s First Lady Dodie Treen presented the moon rocks from Apollo 17 and Apollo 11 to the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum in Baton Rouge.

Lost

At some point, the moon rocks were removed from their original displays in the museum. In 2019, the moon rock from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission was discovered in storage and placed back on display for the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. However, the Apollo 17 rock was missing.

According to a 2011 audit of NASA’s management of space specimens, although NASA still possesses about 80 percent of the original rocks, the agency does not track the fragments given to countries and U.S. states.

In 2002, an effort led by the space news website collectSpace.com began attempting to track down missing rocks. While they couldn’t locate the Louisiana rock, the anonymous man in Florida did.

And Found

“I can’t even tell you how long I owned it,” the man told collectSPACE. “I’m not even sure how much I paid for it. I buy plaques because I take the wood from them and send it to my gunstock guy to make grips for my Colts and so forth.”

While searching for a specific wood color for a project, the man found the moon rock plaque in one of the 15 or 16 boxes he had in storage.

“What the hell is this?” he thought, looking at the plaque for the first time.

He contacted the Governor’s Office to inquire about what he possessed and was directed to the State Museum.

“They wanted me to mail it to them,” he recalled. “I said, ‘I’m not mailing this thing. I will hand-deliver it,’ and that’s what I did.”

He handed over the rock to Steven Maklansky, the interim director of the State Museum at the time.

“I think it is an extraordinary piece of Louisiana history. Obviously, then, the Louisiana State Museum would be a fitting venue to hold it for posterity and offer it for public display,” said Maklansky. “We’re excited to take possession of this piece and share it with our audiences.” ▪️

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