Minuscule Bible That Traveled to Moon Up for Auction in Texas
A minuscule copy of the Bible that traveled to the moon with an astronaut on an Apollo space mission in the 1970s is expected to sell for about $60,000 at an auction in Dallas, Texas, Wednesday.
It's a tiny Bible that can only be read by microscope, and one of 512 produced by the Houston, Texas-based Christian group Apollo Prayer League that had ties to the U.S. space program, according to Daily Mail.
It was sent into orbit with Apollo 13 in 1970, and it is believed that the astronauts used it to pray. That mission, however, wasn't successful as the trip had to be aborted. It was recovered when they splashed down in the Pacific.
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The Bible was sent again the following year with Apollo 14, and successfully landed on the moon with astronaut Edgar Mitchell.
The project to produce the tiny Bibles was led by the Rev. John Stout, who prayed for the astronauts in the wake of the Apollo 1 disaster, which cost three astronauts their lives during a launch rehearsal.
"The idea behind it was simply to take God's words to the moon," Michael Riley, a historian at Heritage Auctions, told the British daily. "For the Apollo 14 flight 300 lunar Bibles were sent, and this particular one was among the 100 stowed in Edgar Mitchell's personal preference kit when he landed on the moon," he said. "This copy has an unbroken line of provenance, having been given by John Stout to his brother, James, and it has been certified by them both, as well as by Edgar Mitchell."
Mitchell was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout. He was also a member of DeMolay International, part of the Masonic Fraternity, and has been inducted into its hall of fame.
Mitchell was also named as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1970 by President Richard Nixon.
In June 2011, the U.S. government sued Mitchell in a Florida court after learning that he placed a camera used on Apollo 14 for auction at the British auction house Bonhams. Mitchell said NASA had given him the camera as a gift upon the completion of the Apollo 14 mission. However, he was asked to return the camera to NASA.
Later, in 2012, Congress enacted a law confirming full ownership rights of artifacts to astronauts on Apollo space missions.
