Astronaut Denies Apollo 12 Crew Kept Moon Rocks

Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon, yesterday disputed the claims of a New York auction house that is selling what it advertised as a lunar rock obtained through an astronaut.

The firm acknowledged there is an error in its catalog but still failed to clarify the rock's source.

"It's just not true," said Bean, 63, who flew the Apollo 12 mission with astronauts Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon in November 1969. None of the mission's crew would ever "keep any of the samples," Bean said indignantly. "They are the property of the United States government."

The rock went on sale at Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers in Manhattan yesterday, part of a large "natural history" auction that includes dinosaur eggs, miscellaneous fossils, prehistoric shark jaws and the 6-foot-tall skeleton of an Ice Age cave bear.

The catalog describes item No. 127A as "a lunar rock specimen" that was "returned to Earth by the Apollo 12 Mission" and later given to a now-deceased executive at White-Westinghouse "by an astronaut who was a close personal friend." The rock is being sold by the executive's sons, Ron and Brian Trochelmann.

David Herskowitz, who organized the auction for Phillips, acknowledged yesterday that the catalogue description was wrong.

"It was a misunderstanding," Herskowitz said. "The moon rock was returned by the Apollo 12 mission, but we admit it did not come directly from the astronauts' hands" to the Trochelmann family.