Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on another world.
The widow of the legendary astronaut, who died back in 2012, discovered the white bag hidden away at the back of a closet. Inside was a collection of miscellaneous objects including metal clips, netting, mirrors and an old 80mm Hasselblad camera.
Thought to have been left on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission, the objects had actually been recovered by Armstrong and stored inside the bag, known as a McDivitt purse, where he had kept them hidden from everyone for 46 years.
The bag and its contents, which may still contain traces of lunar soil from the original mission, are set to be put up on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
Armstrong had even mentioned the bag himself once just before leaving the moon’s surface.
“You know, that – that one’s just a bunch of trash that we want to take back – LM parts, odds and ends, and it won’t stay closed by itself; we’ll have to figure something out for it,” he said.
