posted 10-27-2015 03:00 PM               

According to NASA, the now-destroyed rover was a Local Scientific Survey Module designed, built, and tested at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in 1965 and 1966. A US Air Force Historian who happened to be passing through the small town of Blountsville, Alabama spotted the rover in the backyard of the person who ultimately ended up selling it, and alerted NASA in February of 2014. NASA apparently dragged its feet in recovering the rover, however: By December, it had been destroyed.

"We spoke with [the] historian for the US Air Force, who originally brought the vehicle's existence to the attention of the Marshall Space Flight Center's historian," NASA's Office of the Inspector General wrote in one of the documents. The historian "stated he was visiting his mother when he noticed the rover in the backyard of a neighbor across the street."

NASA tracked down the rover, which had a very sad ending: "Upon contacting the current owner, we learned the Lunar Roving Vehicle had been sold for scrap after [its previous owner] had passed away," NASA wrote in an internal investigation memo.

posted 10-28-2015 12:00 AM               

Lunar rover lost: NASA moon buggy found in Alabama backyard sold as scrap

A 50-year-old prototype moon buggy has been lost to history after being parked in an Alabama backyard and then being sold as scrap metal, according to documents recently released by NASA.

The space agency had been attempting to recover the test article, a predecessor to the lunar roving vehicle (LRV) the Apollo astronauts drove on the moon, when it was learned that the four-wheeled artifact had been discarded.

The story behind the rover's discovery, and its subsequent disposal, became public through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the online magazine Motherboard, which first reported about the relic on Tuesday (Oct. 27).

posted 10-28-2015 02:31 PM               

Lunar rover lost... and found: NASA moon buggy saved by scrap dealer

A prototype lunar rover that was sold to a scrapyard and reported by NASA to be lost has now been found and may be heading to auction.

Just one day after the online magazine Motherboard broke the story about the thought-to-be-scrapped moon rover on Tuesday (Oct. 27), the 50-year-old NASA artifact popped up in the classifieds section of an Alabama newspaper.

"Special Auction," declared the black-and-white ad placed in The Arab Tribune. "Original prototype for the first moon buggy!"

posted 11-01-2015 12:33 PM               

Vaughan, 86, worked as aeronautical research engineer on the German-American rocket team at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center. He said the team actually flew the prototype found this week on NASA's KC-135 Zero G aircraft "to get some idea of how she would bounce with rubber tires and things like that. They used a model very similar to that – they took the roll bars off – to check out the astronauts could get in and off of the vehicle."

Tracy McMahan, spokeswoman with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, said today their historian examined the prototype thoroughly.

It has no markings that could help them verify it was the same one in the von Braun drove or if it was ever even NASA property, she said.

posted 11-01-2015 04:34 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by bwhite1976:
Is it just me or does the top roll bar shape not match the black and white picture? The curve in the junkyard picture looks smaller.

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posted 11-22-2015 12:14 PM               

Around 20 people turned up for today's auction, including the seller, the auction house staff, and the three looky-loos I brought. Only five of us signed up to bid. I was #1. There was also an online auction open, but there wasn't any noticeable activity from that.

One of the bidders asked a lot of questions about authentication before the auction. They don't have a full chain of custody and the retired NASA employee who confirmed the origin by comparison to historic photos had not worked with the prototype when it was at MSFC.

We got a late start, with the auction starting at closer to 12:30 than noon. Bidding started at $25,000 and ended at $30,000 which did not meet the reserve.

posted 04-07-2016 09:18 PM               

Bidding note: the vehicle is currently stored in Memphis, Tennessee, and the buyer is responsible shipping costs from origin to destination.