Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)
177 comments
·July 23, 2025perihelions
GCA10
My father was one of the scientific Principal Investigators (PIs) who analyzed the Apollo 11 lunar samples, back in 1969. Flipping through some of his notes from back then, it sounds as if a rotating assortment of bureaucrats injected themselves into the chain-of-custody with weird and embarrassing effects. To wit:
Some Agriculture Department folks decided that their legal authority to quarantine soil samples brought into the U.S. applied to lunar soils, too. They insisted on building a three-week quarantine facility with slivers of lunar samples, exposed to "germ-free mice born by cesarean section." Only after the mice survived this ordeal was it safe to release the fuller batch of samples.
Another character insisted that the aluminum rock boxes be sealed, while on the moon, with gaskets of indium (soft, rare metal) which would deform to create a very tight seal. The geochemists on earth protested, in vain, that this procedure would ruin their hopes of doing any indium analysis of the samples themselves, shutting down an interesting line of research. No luck in changing the protocol. Turns out that the indium seals didn't work, and the rock boxes reached the earth-based quarantine facilities with normal air pressure anyway.
There's more silliness about trying to keep the lunar samples in a hard vacuum while designing rigidly mounted gloves that could be used to manipulate/slice/divide the samples without breaking the vacuum. Maybe we know today how to sustain flexible gloves in such an environment. We didn't, back then.
dmix
> They insisted on building a three-week quarantine facility with slivers of lunar samples
There was a ton of money flowing in for space and it was the big new thing of the future. Makes sense other agencies would try to insert themselves and try to seem relevant to the new popular thing in the news and latch themselves onto any future spending/authority.
stinkbeetle
Yep, government bureaucracy has always been horribly corrupt, incompetent, and self-serving, unfortunately.
cgriswald
The actual claims of the paper are not that this was 'for show', but that NASA considered the risks unlikely and prioritized the more likely risks to the astronauts lives. I see how the authors got to 'so it was all for show', but it simply isn't true.
There is plenty of evidence that the risk was taken seriously (regulations and treaties surrounding the issue, ICBC activities in the years prior to launch, the expense on things the public would never have known about, medical and biological testing done for the first three missions, NASA's openness with the ICBC about the imperfection of the system and the existence of contingency plans...).
nickff
On one of the Apollo documentaries (I can't remember which one), the astronauts joked that it was the least effective quarantine ever; they talked about how there was a stream of ants going in and out of the Airstream they were in.
dmix
They quarantined in an Airstream van? That's hilarious. Very 1960s
Found the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_quarantine_facility
bawolff
A stream of ants would not necessarily render a quarintine ineffective.
joezydeco
Seems incongruous to take your national heroes and make them sit in a hot trailer for a few days "for show" instead of whisking them home for their debrief and ticker-tape parades.
Unless it was not for the benefit of the astronauts, but the skeptical public back home? Hmm.
tsimionescu
A quarantine is never for the sake of those you quarantine, it's for the sake of the public, by definition.
scottyah
I assume the "hot trailer" was better than the small capsule in space, which was also just "for show".
gmueckl
I see that customs declaration in the context of the Outer Space Treaty from 1967. It stipulates that outer space cannot be appropriated by by any nation. My hypothesis here is that the political message underneath this customs form stunt is an acknowledgement that the crew has left the United States and returned. However, I have nothing that supports this claim.
umanwizard
Do US Navy sailors in international waters have to go through customs on returning to port in the US? I don’t know the answer, but that’s probably the closest analogy.
jcranmer
I don't think so, but you do need to fill out a customs form to ship a package to someone on a US Navy ship.
ofalkaed
No, not even civilians need to do that. Ultimately the only time you have to is when there is documentation of your being in the a foreign country and if there is no documentation you probably don't want to draw attention to yourself. This is why so many people where able to go to and from Cuba when it was technically illegal, US and Cuba agreed to not document/stamp the passports of private citizens.
kevin_thibedeau
I met an AF cargo loadmaster once who told me that they can smuggle anything back to the US that they can fit in the plane. He was importing E-bikes from Japan.
csours
Following this line of thought - this is may be the exact analogy that NASA wanted to counteract.
agagagag
Of course not, if we did they’d find my dog I bought in Vietnam
jki275
If we make port calls anywhere outside the US we definitely go through customs on return.
bongodongobob
I don't think so because the ship is technically US soil afaik.
CobrastanJorji
It's funny. You want to blame NASA for the ridiculous publicity stunts, but they were totally right that a loss of public interest was one of the biggest risks to the program. Neil Armstrong stood on the moon in 1969, but by 1971, Nixon had cancelled Apollo.
GuB-42
I didn't feel like the original author was blaming NASA. The entire Apollo program was a publicity stunt. That doesn't make it less awesome. A moon landing definitely earns you the right to show off.
Not sure about the quarantine, but the customs form is a nice touch. Cheap, simple, effective and harmless.
jeremyjh
Because it was done. The goal was to win the race against the Soviets. The future mission plans were mostly budget padding to ensure that was accomplished.
shayway
The source paper for both articles is paywalled, so maybe it has a better argument than the articles. But to call it theater or a publicity stunt is to imply it didn't have a point beyond public relations, which isn't the case.
Microbes can't be completely contained - easily, anyway - and we knew that perfectly well back then. But we also knew to minimize contact with potentially infected people. Put it this way: if there were lunar germs that the astronauts took back with them, would it have been better to skip the containment procedures, as inadequate as they may have been? Of course not.
NASA played up their ability to contain extraterrestrial microbes for sure. But the containment procedure itself was the best that could be done. If 'absolute isolation' is the bar to which containment is held, by that logic everything short of just not visiting other celestial bodies is theater.
xattt
I can imagine a bunch of short-sleeve wearing dudes, sitting around and shooting the shit to come up with absurd formalities for theatre. It would have been fun.
montjoy
This. Also, maybe setting legal precedent?
refulgentis
No. They're saying it was a stunt. Not setting legal precedent. There was no practical value.
Lammy
The practical value is reinforcing among the general public the idea that humans should not be able to move freely around their own planet. In the future only money will have that right. The modern passport didn't even exist until World War Ⅰ: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521634938 / https://archive.org/details/pdfy-S0NQwPjPkMlzZ2eS/mode/2up
whycome
What aspect of the review suggested that it was mostly for show?
stronglikedan
Considering the source, the source is probably the only thing that "suggested" it, as they are known to do.
cynicalkane
Are you claiming the New York Times is more likely than a comparable newspaper to fabricate random suggestions about astronauts? This is something they are "known to do"?
If you actually read the article, they include a direct link to the sources they cite and explain specifically what those sources say.
smnrchrds
Semi-related:
"Passports please! British paratroopers met by French customs after D-Day airdrop
British paratroopers recreating an airdrop behind German defences to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day were met by French customs officials at a makeshift border checkpost.
Moments after the paratroopers had hit the ground and gathered up their chutes, they formed an orderly queue and handed over their passports for inspection by waiting French customs officials in a Normandy field."
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/passports-please-britis...
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ZY4rlAQus
ceejayoz
Reminds me a bit of when the UK accidentally invaded Spain on a training exercise. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-invade-spa...
> Lord West said: "It wasn't one of the best days in my time. I had a phone call from the military commander saying, 'Sir, I'm afraid something awful's happened.' I thought, 'Goodness me, what?' And he said, 'I'm afraid we've invaded Spain, but we don't think they've noticed.'
> "They charged up the beach in the normal way, being Royal Marines—they're frightfully good soldiers of course, and jolly good at this sort of thing—and confronted a Spanish fisherman who sort of pointed out, 'I think you're on the wrong beach.'
ahi
"Juan Carlos Juarez, the town's mayor, said at the time: "They landed on our coast to confront a supposed enemy with typical commando tactics. But we managed to hold them on the beach.""
I would not have been able to get this out without giggling.
umanwizard
Swiss soldiers have accidentally crossed into Liechtenstein a few times. Similarly, nobody made a fuss.
skeezyboy
the british armed forces are atrocious. i simply cannot fathom how britain controlled so much of the planet at one point
lenkite
Because they had a good officer corps producing some ridiculous military geniuses in their age of empire. As an example, the Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley) was a monster who was unstoppable in the military conquest of India. Many other British commanders failed battling Indian states, but he seemed to win just about every battle, at times being both outnumbered and outarmed.
I would go on to say that it wasn't for that man, it is likely the British conquest of India would have been confined to only a limited territory. Indian states were modernizing and militarizing rapidly (relatively for that era), so any delays in conquest would have made India a hard nut to crack.
bee_rider
This was 2002. They are friendly countries, seems like everyone responded appropriately.
bigyabai
> i simply cannot fathom how britain controlled so much of the planet at one point
Boats, optionally guns.
When you reflect on how easily America became an imperialist crybaby, it can't have been hard for Britain either.
oaththrowaway
Because the food was so bad and the women were so ugly that they had no choice to but leave
peeters
> Passports please! British paratroopers met by French customs after D-Day airdrop
Err, D-Day anniversary airdrop. That headline has only one correct literal interpretation, and it's wrong (not ambiguous, wrong).
arrowsmith
I don't know about the US, but in the UK you can definitely say "D-Day" to mean "an anniversary of the original D-Day", not strictly 6/6/1944. It's not wrong.
Just like you can say "Independence Day" to mean July 4th of any year, not only the specific historical date on which the US declared independence.
nemomarx
This would make sense if there's often D Day ceremonies. In the us I think that's all moved to memorial Day, so D-Day pings only as the original event here
glimshe
I'm not a betting man, but I were, I'd bet on most readers having understood it correctly. I suspect it was meant to be click bait, though.
lucianbr
The headline definitely didn't make any sense to me (I was thinking maybe an Onion article?) before reading the rest.
simonklitj
Made me do a double take for sure.
wat10000
Strange article. Of course you have to go through passport control when you cross an international border.
bitwize
These French customs officials seemed more on the ball than the one I encountered. (Checked my passport, but didn't stamp it, causing problems for me upon landing for my next leg in Helsinki.)
metabagel
I don’t think there is any requirement to stamp passports. Some people specifically ask for a stamp, because they want the memento.
bitwize
The stamp is acknowledgement of your tourist visa. Maybe EU citizens don't need one, but as an American entering France I certainly did. If I didn't, I sure wish the visibly armed Finnish lady who led me back near one of those beat-you-up interrogation rooms had known, it could've saved us both some hassle and me a major scare.
ta1243
In the Schengen area, if you are a non-EU person, until recently you needed to ensure you are stamped in and out otherwise you'll run into issues with them thinking you may have overstayed.
After UK went all freedumb and left the EU this caused a lot of issues, I have a UK colleague that visited his wife's family in Poland over a Christmas, didn't get a stamp on the way back, then ran into problems a few months later as they argued he had been in Europe for months.
ortusdux
Makes me think of the Apollo insurance covers:
"The Apollo insurance covers are autographed postal covers signed by the astronaut crews prior to their mission. The primary motivation behind this action was the refusal of life insurance companies to provide coverage for the astronauts. Consequently, the astronauts devised a strategy involving the signing of hundreds of postal covers. These were to be left behind for their families, who could then sell them in the event of the astronauts' deaths.[1] The insurance covers began with Apollo 11 and ended with Apollo 16."
I-M-S
A country that sends men to the Moon but isn't able to guarantee the wellbeing of their families shouldn't be able to send men to the Moon.
xenadu02
It wasn't that they didn't have life insurance at all. It was that they couldn't increase their life insurance on the private market either due to their line of work or "Act of God"-style clauses. Or at least they thought that to be the case. This is similar to how some life insurance policies exclude death while acting as a pilot in general aviation.
AFAIK all of them were former military and obviously current government employees so their families would have been entitled to any military life insurance they purchased as well as any pension benefits due (military and federal civilian). I can't give you the exact amounts because it has changed over the years and also depends on how many years of military and/or civilian service you had.
But generally all government employees covered under the retirement plan have an annuity or monthly survivor benefit available that is some portion of their final salary at death or their average salary whichever was higher. Often there is a fixed adder as well (basic death benefit adder right now is $41,000 per year so your spouse would get 50% of your final salary plus $41k).
In addition the federal plan (and social security) pays monthly for surviving children until they reach age 18. The federal plan is a bit nicer in that it pays until 18 or 22 if you are a full time student. Both pay for life if the child is disabled (though the government definition of disabled is rather strict).
All of this is just survivor benefits. Once your surviving spouse retires they are entitled to the pension payments you would have received.
thescriptkiddie
an interesting implication of this is that the government probably didn't want to issue them life insurance because then they would have to explain why they don't do that for all military personnel
CSMastermind
When I was in we had life insurance. Before every deployment they had lawyers come in and walk us through creating a will, explaining the benefit, etc.
jki275
The US government does issue life insurance for all military personnel. It's a nominal cost (20 bucks a month IIRC) for something like 400k of coverage. It's been around since 1914[1].
As far as I know all of the astronauts were military at that time, so they probably would have been covered by this program. There could be any number of nuances I'm not aware of though.
[1]https://benefits.va.gov/benefits/infographics/pdfs/timeline_...
magicalhippo
Reminded me of when I got to see one of the customs declaration for an off-shore oil platform built here in Norway.
It was a single-item declaration: one oil plaform.
However, the elecronic customs message format didn't have enough digits to fit the item value, over a billion NOK IIRC.
After some calls with customs, they had to send it with a fictitious item value and add the true value in a free-text field.
This worked fine since there were no duties or taxes on exporting oil platforms, so no cross-checks that would fail.
lucianbr
Couldn't they split it into "Oil platform part 1" "part 2" and so on? Or "Oil platform metal parts" and such. Kinda seems like one object being too large in some measure for a single message is a predictable edge case.
Lovesong
They can, the problem is that if you declare this as different parts then you will have to pay taxes accordingly to the chosen HSCode for each one in the declaration.
If you search for the HSCODE you will find that offshore oil and natural gas drilling and production platforms have their own, 8431434000, which means if you declare only this one you will pay no taxes.
magicalhippo
In my experience they're also a bit particular about declaring things as they are on the border.
An oil platform getting towed into place is one piece, not an IKEA kit or similar.
That said, could very well be the local customs officer was just totally unprepared and this was the solution they came up with on the spot. I've seen other cases where different companies have gotten directly contradictory instructions from different customs offices on the exact same scenario.
lsllc
I think Customs is on to that -- that was how Saddam Hussein got the precision parts of his "supergun" out of Europe into Iraq, the parts were all labeled as oil industry related.
ceejayoz
I'd be worried about that raising money laundering flags, like someone splitting transactions into a bunch of $9,999 chunks.
lucianbr
Since they were talking it over with customs, they would clear any flags as "we agreed on this solution because the item cost was too large to fit the message format".
It's not like Google, where there's automatic inhuman consequences. And even Google can make exceptions if they want to, just they usually don't care.
9dev
LOL. I’m on the receiving end of these customs declarations, and stories like this are the reason the copies are so notoriously hard to parse programmatically… lovely, thanks for sharing.
Scoundreller
What’s the “escape value” that triggers people to read the free text field? Or is it just zero?
And if zero, how often do they just get mistakenly processed as zero value?
9dev
Zero; or an arbitrary number; or a number that was destined for another field, but the commanding officer misread and filled the form wrong; or null; or as many digits as fit in the field. Any of these.
magicalhippo
In a case like this, they usually call ahead to let customs know, and follow up with the declaration ID once it has been sent.
Apart from that, customs is very tight lipped about what triggers manual processing of a declararion.
Though for example a large discrepancy between weight and value typically would lead to it getting flagged for manual processing, as I understand it.
bdamm
Whatever it is is likely to be part of the endless arms race between customs agencies and smugglers, so I doubt you'll get the privilege of finding out.
jleyank
I think at least one astronaut needed to file a request for tax deadline extension due to being “out of the country” at filing time. Didn’t have an entry in the system for “off the planet” I guess…
elijaht
Ha, that was actually Apollo 13: https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/john-swigert-jr
whycome
If they said they were away on the moon that would be a lie.
Bluestein
I mean, technically ...
aspir
The story in the editor's note is charming enough that it's worth calling out:
>Thanks to UC alumnus Luama Mays, JD ’66, for sharing a copy of the declaration with UC Magazine. Mays was a pilot who befriended Armstrong while the former astronaut was teaching at UC and Mays was running an aviation company. Initially Armstrong called him, without even identifying himself, asking for a ride on Mays old "bubble-style" helicopter left over from the Korean War. It was exactly what Armstrong had trained on in preparation for operating the lunar module.
yardie
I did a 1100m passage from Puerto Rico to Miami. Anchored in the Bahamas bank but didn't step on land. And when we arrived in the US we weren't required to clear in since our last port of departure was PR. Pretty sure they were tracking us by drone, blimp, AIS, and radar the entire way because they weren't suspicious enough compared to my previous experiences.
Curious why Apollo 11 would have to clear customs since the moon isn't a foreign country and they just did a there and back.
ethan_smith
Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the moon is considered international territory ("province of all mankind"), so technically they were returning from outside US jurisdiction, triggering customs requirements.
soneil
That's the whole point of the parent comment - you don't trigger customs requirements by leaving and re-entering the country. You trigger them by entering from another country.
for example - you don't need a passport to travel from the US mainland to Hawaii. It doesn't matter that the aircraft cross international waters, it matters what country you were in last.
bdamm
This is all kind of too reductionist.
The US DHS agents in the US make a choice not to fuss over the airplanes or even cruise ships sailing from US ports to Hawaii and back. They could, but they don't. They probably validate the ship or plane's location via transponder, but it wouldn't even surprise me if they don't do that for regular commercial transport.
This kind of local and specific policy is great and it is enacted in lots of places within US jurisdiction.
mytailorisrich
You are entering from "another country" if you are coming from the Moon.
For this purpose "country" has to be interpret as stepping on any land outside of the US.
umanwizard
The trip as described passed through foreign territorial waters and probably also international waters.
tempodox
They could have smuggled moonshine.
burnt-resistor
Freshly bottled from the edge of the dark side where it's sweetest.
csomar
> Pretty sure they were tracking us by drone, blimp, AIS, and radar the entire way because they weren't suspicious enough compared to my previous experiences.
Probably none of that. The border check is a bureaucratic operation. Modern day border checks are 0% contraband, 1% terrorism and 99% just messing with the public.
jedberg
Due to international treaty the moon is considered international land, like Antarctica.
lucianbr
You think some other country would have objected to the US not requesting cusoms declarations from their own citizens, reasoning it breaks the treaty obligations?
jedberg
I think it was more about the US insisting the rules get followed no matter what. Sort of like how astronauts today going to ISS have to fill out international travel forms, even when they leave from the USA.
nevster
Direct link to the actual image : https://magazine.uc.edu/content/dam/magazine/docs/Moon_rocks...
hiccuphippo
There's a funny story about how any new territory falls under the jurisdiction of the dioceses from which the expedition departed, so the bishop of Orlando is the bishop of the moon.
Ylpertnodi
My god's bigger than your god.
burnt-resistor
Mine does genocide better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Account_of_the_Destruc...
ceejayoz
> Who would have guessed the regulations would have been enforced so rigorously in 1969 when three men returned to the U.S. from a rather long business trip – to the moon and back.
I mean, I'd imagine it was mostly done for the joke aspect.
edit: https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.ht...
> "Yes, it's authentic," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick told Space.com. "It was a little joke at the time."
zhobbs
Yeah, I think we're over analyzing it in this thread. Seems pretty light hearted and fun.
potato3732842
It's easier to just have them fill out the form than get a common sense exception.
more_corn
No. This is one example of many. NASA astronauts have to fill out government business travel paperwork for travel to the ISS. The rules must be followed even if the rules don’t make sense.
ceejayoz
The article covers that.
> Space station crews launching on Russian Soyuz spacecraft have to make their way to the Central Asian spaceport of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. No matter what the mission, even astronauts have to go through customs, NASA officials said. As part of their routine airline flights to other countries and back, they of course encounter airport customs.
It's not to/from the ISS that's the issue there.
A US-only crew on a US-launched spacecraft that lands in US territory won't need to do it. (ISS may add a few complexities, but if you stay on, say, the Shuttle, you're not leaving US-controlled territory.)
sidewndr46
For travel to Kazakhstan it makes sense to show a passport of some kind as they want to know why someone is entering the country. Traveling to Baikonur of course being a legitimate reason to enter the country. There's one aspect of this I don't understand entirely. What if the astronaut travels to the ISS from Baikonur, then used some of form return vehicle that lands in US territory? How would we handle that?
potato3732842
If the rules don't make sense for a situation why do they apply? Why isn't there a carve out?
It's easy to screech about potentially unforeseeable future cases and precedents but it's not like this stuff is free.
The cost of this attitude applied at scale is mind boggling.
ceejayoz
There are carve-outs. They're just pretty general so human judgement can be applied to the odd edge cases - "at the discretion of the Secretary of State" sort of things.
Random example: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/101.8
the__alchemist
At least as of a few years ago, the Qataris required foreign aircrew (e.g. fighter pilots) operating out of bases in their country to do this after every mission! What a pain.
rob74
Yes, the form really does ask if a person is bringing in snails.
Even more curiously, it asks for animals in general, and then specifically for snails. I wonder what it is about snails specifically that US Customs are/were so interested in?
caseyohara
Biosecurity/agrosecurity. Some snails are highly invasive and destructive to crops so they are banned or tightly regulated by the USDA.
jlarocco
I'm not sure what they were looking for, specifically, but snails can be bad news: https://bouldercolorado.gov/services/new-zealand-mudsnails
These things were mainly publicity stunts. The supposed biohazard quarantine for returning Apollo astronauts was a theater performance, too.
https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/the-apollo-moon-l... ("The Apollo moon landing was real, but NASA's quarantine procedure was not")
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/science/nasa-moon-quarant... ("A review of archives suggests that efforts to protect Earth from contamination by any organism brought back from the lunar surface were mostly for show")