NASA lost a bag of lunar dust particles and valuable heritage pieces

The Office of the Inspector General of NASA (OIG), an entity that is dedicated to supervising to prevent inefficient or illegal operations, detected a series of anomalies in the management of the historical properties of the Agency.

These types of reports appear every so often and sometimes surprise with unusual issues in the administrations. Particularly, in the case of NASA, the extent to which historical properties are administered and used was analyzed.

In the report published a few hours ago, it is mentioned that NASA continues to use part of that heritage for current projects and that the elements that do not serve have an important historical sense, so their preservation is relevant.

What did you find? A significant amount of historical personal property has been lost, lost or taken over by former employees, due to the lack of adequate procedures to maintain them. The matter is quite serious because, they say, "poor maintenance of the records contributed to the Agency losing possession of a bag containing particles of lunar dust."

The administrative deficiencies also put a strain on the agency a while ago, when a historian of the US Air Force. UU he noticed (what he considered) NASA's prototype lunar rover in an Alabama neighborhood. The historian reported the situation to NASA and this in turn to the OIG.

The serious situation resulted in the OIG summoning NASA to take ownership of the vehicle, but it took so long (four months) that the man who owned it sold it to a scrap shop. The agency contacted the person in the store, but the latter, realizing the value of the vehicle, auctioned off it in an undisclosed figure. So they say:

We discovered that NASA does not have adequate processes to identify or manage its assets. It may not be the most appropriate entity either.

For example, the agency classifies 815 pieces of art and most of them remain stored and not exhibited in the Centers, because maintaining the correct temperature, humidity and lighting to guarantee their correct conservation can be expensive. Transferring these assets to an external organization, such as the Smithsonian Institute, would allow art to be preserved and displayed more efficiently.

The report concludes that they should review their policies, develop processes to validate their property more efficiently, have comprehensive procedures to manage their assets and evaluate if they are really competent to keep these pieces in place, among other things.