Apollo 11 Moon Dust Proves To Be Stellar Investment For Woman

INVERNESS, IL — Only months after beating NASA in court over possession of a bag containing rare moon dust — the first time a private citizen was awarded ownership of a lunar object that had been sold by the U.S. government — an Inverness woman will now be placing those same celestial particles on the selling block in July, Sotheby’s New York, the auction house brokering the potential sale, announced Monday. The auction will be July 20, the anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, the same mission when the dust was collected.

Call it a case of things coming full circle for the specially designed, 11.5-inch, embroidered, zippered bag and for its current owner, Nancy Lee Carlson, a corporate lawyer and collector of space artifacts. In 2015, Carlson won the NASA decontamination bag — still covered in microscopic dust and rock particles from the moon's surface — at a U.S. Marshal's auction. Her winning bid was $995. (Get Patch real-time email alerts for the latest Palatine news. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

But anyone expecting to take home this piece of history — American, human, interstellar, take your pick — will need to be willing to go quite a bit higher during the bidding at July's auction: Sotheby's expects the bag and its contents to fetch between $2 million to $4 million. Carlson is expected to donate a portion of what she earns from the sale to charities, including the Immune Deficiency Foundation and the Bay Cliff Health Camp Children’s Therapy and Wellness Center, according to the auction house. She also plans to create a scholarship for students studying speech pathology at Northern Michigan University, Carlson's alma mater, Sotheby's added.

RELATED: Rare Bag Of Moon Dust Back In Hands Of Inverness Woman

Carlson's legal battle with NASA began when she had experts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston examine her newly won prize. Once scientists there discovered that the bag's contents still contained microscopic lunar material from the Apollo 11 mission, U.S. officials claimed that, despite its sale at auction, the bag remained government property.

But in February, a federal judge disagreed with the government's claim and awarded ownership of the bag — as well as the microscopic moon motes still clinging to it — to Carlson.

WATCH: Relive — or simply rewatch, depending on your age — the 1969 launch of Apollo 11:

Go to the website for Sotheby's New York for more information about the upcoming auction.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin conducts experiments during the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. (Photo by Neil Armstrong | NASA | Wikimedia Commons)

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