This is CBS Out of the World, Hotel Mars, episode and David Livingston, Dr. Space himself,

of The Space Show joins me, and we're very pleased to welcome the senior space editor

of ours, Technica Eric Berger, to help us understand a strange story about moon dust

and dead cockroaches, three dead cockroaches, without names to my knowledge.

But recently in the news, these three dead cockroaches, in conjunction with dust, said

to be from the surface of the moon, was offered on auction in the Boston area.

What happens next is part of the legend of moon travel.

Eric, a very good evening to you, those three dead cockroaches, that moon dust.

Where is it now, and what is the determination of NASA about the freedom to resell dead cockroaches

who may or may not have ingested moon dust?

Good evening to you.

Good evening.

So there was a scientist named Marion Brooks who did this research back.

After basically, after Apollo 11, and they wanted to make sure that the moon dust coming

back was not toxic.

So they, he did some research like, this was while the astronauts, Neil and Buzz and

Michael Collins were in quarantine, just they fed cockroaches, this moon dust, to see

if they had any harmful effects.

And the cockroaches survived, and to the astronauts got out of quarantine.

Now, more than 50 years later, a little bit of this dust, and three of the cockroaches

have been put up for auction by R and R auction.

And NASA said, well, well, well, well, well, you cannot commercially sell moon dust that

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