An ID plate from Apollo 11’s lunar module Eagle sold for $468,500 at an auction of 2,000 items of memorabilia owned by the first man on the moon Saturday. The auction raised more than $7.4 million and was held on behalf of Neil Armstrong’s family. A piece of the propeller and wing from the Wright Flyer, which Armstrong took with him to the moon, sold for $275,000 each. The flight suit Armstrong wore aboard Gemini 8, which performed the first ever docking maneuver between two spacecraft, sold for $109,375. Armstrong died in 2012 and had never specified what should be done with the treasure trove of mementoes from the first decade of manned space exploration.
Also on the block was a gold naval aviator’s helmet once owned by John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, which sold for $46,250. Glenn wore the helmet on a record-setting transcontinental flight in 1957 called Project Bullet. It was actually offered for sale by Matt Carpenter, the son of Glenn’s fellow Mercury 7 astronaut Scott Carpenter, who received it as a gift from Glenn decades ago.
