Neil Armstrong had a secret stash of moon landing mementos.
The first man to walk on the moon kept a bag full of small parts from the lunar module “Eagle” that he and his Apollo 11 crewmate Buzz Aldrin famously piloted to a landing at Tranquility Base on July 20, 1969. The stowage bag was discovered by Armstrong’s widow after he died in 2012.
“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,” Allan Needell, the Apollo curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, wrote in a blog published on Friday (Feb. 6). “Needless to say, for a curator of a collection of space artifacts, it is hard to imagine anything more exciting.”
The bag, itself flown to the moon, was referred to as the “McDivitt purse,” after the Apollo 9 astronaut whose idea it was to include aboard the spacecraft.
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