The NASA Inspector General's office is looking into an internet auction listing by an Ohio man who tried to sell a heat shield supposedly recovered from the Challenger space shuttle wreckage - a potentially lawbreaking act.
The online auction site removed the listing late Monday after agents from the Inspector General's office contacted eBay and notified them that selling pieces of the Challenger is a violation of federal law.
"We're looking into the matter to see if it warrants an investigation," Sam Maxey, an assistant inspector general, said Tuesday. He refused to give out any more details.
Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986, killing the seven astronauts aboard.
The NASA Office of the Inspector General is an independent agency with nearly 200 employees that assist NASA with audits, investigations and efforts to prevent and detect fraud in agency programs.
The eBay listing went up Thursday with a minimum bid of $199. Initially, it was slated to end November 7, but on Tuesday the site listed the item as "invalid or no longer in our database."
"We're happy to see it being taken off," said NASA spokesman Brian Dunbar of the auction's termination.
EBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said the website chose to remove the auction after conversations with NASA.
"We checked our rules and regulations, they checked theirs and we came to a mutual agreement that the piece of merchandise was government property and not appropriate to sell," Pursglove said.
EBay is undecided if it will take action against the seller, who may have violated his user agreement if he tried to auction an illegal item.
The seller claimed to have a "heat shield" recovered while he was part of a U.S. Coast Guard crew that was first to arrive at the crash scene in 1986.
"I had no idea it was illegal to possess or sell this item and would gladly return [it] to proper authorities," the seller wrote in an e-mail response to space.com. He refused to give his full name and other details.
As of midday Monday, four offers were made to the seller with the highest bid at $255.
The sale was billed to include 40 pictures of the recovery effort taken by the seller and a copy of a letter of commendation from a Coast Guard commander for the crew's part in the recovery.
If investigators can prove that the item is part of Challenger, probably a thermal tile, it might be reclaimed and stored at one of two underground Minuteman missile silos at Cape Canaveral where NASA stores the Challenger wreckage.
NASA keeps the wreckage, recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, in case it is needed for future investigations, and out of respect for the families of those who died in the accident.
EBay doesn't generally monitor the types of items sold on the site.
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