A rare piece of Alabama space history is heading to auction next week.
Last year a lunar rover prototype originally built in the 1960s was discovered in Huntsville. The moon buggy, called the Local Scientific Survey Model, was found in a scrapyard, but now it will be sold at an auction where it is expected to go for at least $125,000.
A Huntsville-based company, Brown Engineering, built the rover in 1965-1966 as one of a number of prototypes developed for the Apollo space program. The Local Scientific Survey Model was used for lunar mobility tests, evaluations and human factors studies. It flew in NASA’s Zero-G aircraft to test the rubber tires, but it never went into space.
Photographs have also been found of famous German scientist Wernher von Braun, inventor of the Saturn V rocket and first director of Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center, driving the rover prototype.
The buggy was declared excess by NASA because it was not “actual needed flight hardware,” so it was sold at an auction many years ago. The first buyer left the rover sitting in his backyard in Blountsville, Alabama, which is where the current owner, Johnny Worley, came across it. NASA did attempt to get the rover back, but ultimately decided against it because it wasn’t essential hardware. Documents from the NASA Inspector General, which are included with the rover, stated, “Since the LRV is no longer available for recovery, this matter is closed in the files of this office. No further action will occur.”
The moon buggy has been authenticated by Otha Vaughan, an aeronautical research engineer that worked with Wernher von Braun on the rocket team in Huntsville. Prototypes like this buggy are extremely rare and hardly ever available to the public. The rover is just one small example of the amount of work, research, and innovation that went into the Apollo program, and how scientists and engineers in Alabama were instrumental in getting mankind to the moon.
RR Auctions of Boston is selling the rover with bidding starting on April 14 and ending on April 21.
