There are many stories of historical treasures hiding for decades in attics and cupboards around the world, but few match what was found in a closet in Ohio in 2012. A few months after the death of Neil Armstrong, his widow, Carol, came across a white bag in a closet. Upon closer inspection, she found tiny parts that looked like they could have belonged to a spaceship. In the end, it wasn't just any spaceship but a collection of items from the Lunar Module Eagle of the Apollo 11 mission.
The astronaut's widow reached out to Allan Needell, the Apollo curator at the National Air and Space Museum, who had visited her a few weeks earlier to make an inventory of the items the Armstrong family intended to donate to the National Collection. “I received an email from Carol Armstrong that she had located in one of Neil's closets a white cloth bag filled with assorted small items that looked like they may have come from a spacecraft,” Needell wrote in a blog post in 2015. “Needless to say, for a curator of a collection of space artifacts, it is hard to imagine anything more exciting.”
The white bag, which made the trip to the Moon, is known as a Temporary Stowage Bag or “McDivitt purse,” after the Apollo 9 astronaut who asked for a bag to put away objects when astronauts didn't have time to go to fixed stowage locations. Armstrong's bag contained the waist tether he used to support his feet during the only rest period he got on the Moon, utility lights and their brackets, equipment netting, a mirror made of metal, an emergency wrench, the optical sight that was mounted above Armstrong's window and, most importantly, the 16mm data acquisition camera (DAC) that recorded the footage of the lander's final approach. All of these were bound for the same fate—being destroyed when the Eagle crashed into the lunar surface after serving its purpose.
Since the crew had to account for any added weight for the return trajectory, Armstrong didn't simply sneak the bag. Mission transcripts record Armstrong telling command module Columbia pilot Michael Collins about it. “You know, that—that one's just a bunch of trash that we want to take back—LM parts, odds and ends, and it won't stay closed by itself. We'll have to figure something out for it.” Later, the bag would be described to mission control as “odds and ends” and “10 pounds of LM miscellaneous equipment.”
While it's unclear how Armstrong retained possession after the mission, he wasn't the only astronaut to keep mementos from his trip to the Moon. Apparently, it's so common that in 2012, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law granting NASA's Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo crew members “full ownership rights” to their space artifacts.
Today, the data acquisition camera is on display at the National Air and Space Museum after Armstrong's widow donated it in 2019, alongside its power cable. Other items are listed as “promised gifts.” Still, the fact that the astronaut saved these items from the dark emptiness of space is enough of a gift for those who have long been fascinated by the historic moon landing.
In 2012, Neil Armstrong's widow found a bag of mementos from Apollo 11 that the astronaut had kept stowed away in a closet at his home.
Photo: NASA / Carol Armstrong / ALSJ
Source: Lunar Surface Flown Apollo 11 Artifacts From the Neil Armstrong Estate
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