posted 06-29-2010 08:27 PM               

The auction ended today, but the buyer backed out and it is back up with a Buy It Now price of 360 pounds, or about $540.

It is item 260627827376, described as a NASA Betacloth Apollo Samples Return Bag, Apollo 13.

Here is part of the description:

Beta cloth (Betacloth) zipped bag for Moon rock ? or other samples return to earth. This is a genuine NASA astronaut artefact from the Apollo era. This would have been transfered from the LEM to the CM for the trip home.

However, in this case I think those signatures are actually a distraction. There is a label on the bag reading "M071/M073 SAMPLES RETURN CONTAINER", and a little online research reveals that this bag dates from the Skylab missions. And certainly not for moon rocks - I'll put a description of the experiments from a NASA history at the end of this post.

So if anyone is interested in a Skylab beta cloth bag (possibly flown? Another label starts with "v56-", which indicates Skylab II) signed by two Apollo 13 astronauts, now you know about it. I'd appreciate it if anyone who has further information or opinions about this item could post about it.

Gemini had shown that astronauts lost calcium from bones and nitrogen from muscle-not enough to be operationally dangerous on a lunar landing mission but potentially serious for longer flights. Nothing was done in Apollo, however, and in 1969 the medics knew no more about the process than in 1966. Two Skylab experiments, M071 and M073, were designed to determine how long the losses continued, how serious they were, and whether anything could be done to arrest or reverse the changes.

Experiment M073 measured the urinary output of several substances of metabolic importance; its requirements affected mainly the urine and feces collection systems. M071, on the other hand, required accurate control of mineral intake as well as accurate measurement of output. Mineral-balance studies are common but exacting procedures. The subjects, usually hospital patients confined to bed, are given a constant, carefully measured supply of the constituents under study (calcium and nitrogen), and their total output of urine and feces is collected, accurately measured, and carefully analyzed. Even in a well equipped hospital such studies are difficult; on Skylab, experimenters proposed to conduct them on active astronauts engaged in a host of other activities at the same time.

posted 06-30-2010 02:11 AM               

I actually think the v56- part number indicates Skylab 4 (aka III) but as I don't have a stowage list for these missions I can't be sure.

In any case it would have been a nice item to have signed by some of the Skylab astronauts but Lovell and Haise?

I asked the seller about all this and his reply was:

The experiment may be as you said however the experiments started on the Apollo mission and you will find the first reports dated 1969 - long before Skylab. The item is Apollo and would indeed be transfered from CM to LEM and back. Lovell told me something different but the experiment numbers speak for themselves (I have looked them up).

Captain Lovell authenticated this...