ARTS 
Half a century ago the idea that the world’s leading fine art auction houses would one day be selling space memorabilia might have been dismissed as science fiction. But on July 16 – four days before the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing – Bonhams New York will light the blue touch paper on a sale of almost 400 items relating to the history of space exploration that is set to raise more than $1.5m (£910,000).
Artefacts range from a half-inch steel bolt worth $1,200 that was salvaged from Freedom 7, the craft that made Alan Shepard the first American in space in 1961, to the 29-page checklist used by Charles Duke during the second and third lunar surface explorations of the 1972 Apollo 16 mission. Offered complete with the curved metal wristband and Velcro strap that attached it to Duke’s spacesuit during a dozen hours on the moon’s surface, it is tipped to fetch up to $300,000.
Bonhams specialists claim to have spent years amassing the items; their aim is to capture a collecting market enthused by the fact that it is four decades since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became, respectively, the first and second people to walk on the surface of the moon. Among the lots are more than 50 items relating to their Apollo 11 mission, including the star chart used to take celestial measurements after the landing of the lunar module Eagle ($70,000-$90,000) and the flight plan on which Aldrin inscribed the exact time of Armstrong’s historic “giant leap for mankind” ($40,000-$50,000).
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Auction houses do not yet employ dedicated space memorabilia specialists, so the task of preparing the sale and writing the catalogue notes has been left to Bonhams books and manuscripts expert Matthew Haley and his team. In October last year, they oversaw the $132,000 sale of a collection of papers relating to Wernher von Braun, the German rocket engineer who led the development of the Saturn V booster that made the 1969 moon landing possible.
Haley says the lots have come to the sale via the personal collections or deceased estates of around a dozen astronauts or space engineers, notably Aldrin, Fred Haise – the lunar module pilot on the aborted Apollo 13 lunar mission – and the Mercury space capsule designer Maxime Faget. Items contributed by Haise include an unused packet of dehydrated cocoa said to be worth up to $6,000, and an eight-inch brush used to remove moon dust from camera lenses that was given to him by the crew of Apollo 14. It could make $175,000.
“A great deal of space memorabilia takes the form of manuscripts, blueprints or photographs, which is why the task of assembling this sale fell to us, but a large number of objects and pieces of equipment have also been consigned,” says Haley.
“Most of the best lots have come from astronauts or their families who have decided that this is probably a good time to offer them for sale due to the Apollo 11 anniversary. We’re hoping that there will be some museum and institutional interest but there are legions of private collectors out there, too.”
Haley adds that, although the most important items are expected to fetch six-figure sums, there are plenty of more affordable objects. Among these are a segment of heat shield that was attached to the MA-2 capsule during its unmanned 18-minute test-flight in 1961. “You can still see the charring caused by atmospheric friction during re-entry,” enthuses Haley.
This sale is not the first significant auction dedicated to space memorabilia. In December 1993 Sotheby’s New York offered 237 items relating to the history of Russian space exploration. Among these were the Soyuz TM-10 space capsule, the spacesuit used by the Japanese television journalist Toyohiro Akiyama for his trip to the Mir space station in 1990, and a mannequin named “Ivan Ivanovich”, used for testing the Russian Vostok spacecraft in 1961.
Christie’s, too, staged a space sale in May 2001, which proved to be controversial when Yuri Gagarin’s original account of the first manned spaceflight – said to have originally been given to Fidel Castro by Nikita Kruschev – fetched $171,000. After the sale, Gagarin’s widow Valentina disputed the authenticity of the piece, while a member of the Russian Federal Archive Service claimed that it had been stolen from the government. Ultimately, the sale was deemed above board.
Watch collectors have also had the odd opportunity to buy an astronaut’s timepiece. Two years ago, a 1965 Omega Speedmaster that belonged to Apollo VII command module pilot Donn Eisele fetched $204,000 in New York. The Holy Grail among space watches, however, is the Omega that was wrapped around the wrist of Buzz Aldrin’s spacesuit during his 1969 moonwalk. It is unlikely ever to appear for sale – after making it safely into space and back it was lost in the post en route to an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute.
