[meteorite-list] Moon Dust

[JoshuaTreeMuseum]

All the AP people, or whoever wrote the original article,  had to do was add 
the simple caveat that all non-Antarctic lunar meteorites and meteoritical 
materials are perfectly legal to possess, buy and sell. A simple distinction 
between the legality of non-Antactic  lunar meteorites and the illegality of 
NASA moon rocks would have done it. These people are, after all, journalism 
majors, unschooled in the esoteric, highly specialized  field of 
meteoritics.

Returning to the gist of the thread, it looks like the Feds and NASA are 
cracking down on the private possession of lunar dust retrieved from space 
paraphenalia. NASA workers regularly used strips of tape to clean  lunar 
dust off space suits  before they were returned to their manufacturer for 
inspection and repair.

The Slezak lunar dust and other dust collected by Florian Noller from a moon 
bag carried on Apollo 16 has been in a gray area, apparently up until now. 
Unless the Feds are talking about some of the smuggled dust from the space 
suits. Sounds like they're talking about the Slezak dust which Noller  has 
openly sold in the past. I think he was taken in for questioning and maybe 
charged but it came to nothing and he kept the dust. Looks  like now they 
want all the dust for themselves.

Phil Whitmer