From: NewsProfiles@aol.net
Date: 95-12-01 17:45:11 EST

By Carol Vinzant
NEW YORK, Nov 29 (Reuter) - You may be able to buy a piece of the moon at a natural history auction on Saturday. Then again, you may be getting a fake.

Phillips Auction House in Manhattan has been forced to change its description of what it says is a moon rock after an astronaut complained.

Even the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is so sure it is not from the moon that it is not even bothering to test its authenticity.

``We know where all our moon rocks are,'' said NASA spokeswoman Eileen Hawley.

She said a lunar rock collected on the space programme would be the property of the U.S. government and if NASA thought this one was real, it would send the FBI to collect it for examination and possibly reclaim it.

Private ownership of moon rocks, which were classified as ``unique and limited national resources,'' is illegal, she said.

The Phillips catolog of its natural history sale originally described the 0.46 ounce 13.2 gram rock as a product of the 1969 Apollo 12 mission that was given by an astronaut to an executive at the White-Westinghouse company to show appreciation for its help in space food engineering. It said the rock was expected to sell for $300,000 to $400,000. his friends.

Phillips changed its description to say that the moon rock was given to the executive by the Apollo 12 mission.

The auction's organiser, David Herskowitz, said Phillips still believes the rock was one of 36 moon rocks given out to companies that helped with the space project.

NASA said, however, that no companies received lunar souvenirs.

Herskowitz said a man described only as ``Mr. Trochelmann'' was given the rock because he had engineered food-sealing technology used in space, but never made money on it. He is dead and his sons are selling it.

The Apollo missions collected 800 pounds (382 kg) of moon rock, more than 90 percent of which is in NASA custody. Museums have about three percent and less than one percent was made into gifts given to foreign heads of state, spokeswoman Hawley said. Moon rocks were originally quarantined to ensure health safety, she said.

From time to time lunar rocks appear at auction, but they are usually fakes, Hawley said, results of stories of some relative tangentially working with the space project.

Robert Curtis Walker, chief geologist at the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, Calif., who examined the rock, said he is still 80 percent certain it came from the moon.

``It doesn't fit the type of rock known to be returned, but certain properties can't be explained otherwise,'' Walker said.