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How an Alabama Scrap Dealer Became the Owner of NASA's Lunar Rover Prototype

One of the earliest lunar rover prototypes was lost for more than 50 years until it surfaced earlier this fall.
Image: NASA

Earlier this fall, we brought you the curious story of a long-lost lunar rover prototype tested by NASA in the 1960s. At the time, we decided to keep some of the details off the record, but for this week's podcast, we delve deep into the rover's history and its journey from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to a scrap yard in Alabama.

This episode of Radio Motherboard unfolds as it moves along, so in the interest of not spoiling it, we'll just get right to it. Thanks for listening!

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Show notes (contains spoilers):

Cold open: Worth checking out this video, it's very cool!

1:30 — Here's all our FOIA reporting

1:40 — Here's our FBI Glomar

2:50 — Here's our series of stories about the alleged Carnegie Mellon / FBI Tor attack

4:40 — A little more info about the KSM vacuum

6:20 — Here's a story about NASA's pornography investigations

7:30 — The mystery begins!

8:30 — The whole FOIA is available here

11:50 — Robert Pearlman's Collect Space is a wonderful website and you should check it out

15:23 — A watch that went to space just sold for $1.6 million, a new record for a piece of astronaut memorabilia

17:00 — Here's the classified ad!

20:00 — We get some clarity on the mystery

23:00 — Motherboard tracks down an old friend of the rover

24:00 — Skeet Vaughan has a very interesting website with some cool NASA history

32:00 — Here's the auction blog post