TULSA, Okla. (AP) — A graduate student at the University of Phoenix in Michigan was assigned to find a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission.
Her search led her to the Oklahoma History Center where she found two moon rocks.
Rose Niang-Casey is a probation officer and graduate student in Detroit studying criminal justice at the University of Phoenix in Michigan.
When a professor assigned her to track down a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission, she didn’t know what to expect, she said.
However, her search, which began in October, immediately transformed the way she felt about it.
“You start looking for something you didn’t know about and get excited,” Niang-Casey, 38, said during a telephone interview from her home.
The project aims to teach students how to investigate. And investigate she did.
She initially searched online for records and documents of where the moon rocks might be.
The search quickly became an obsession, surprising her family and friends. “It sounds corny that I, a probation officer, whose job it is to track and supervise offenders, would be compelled with finding a moon rock,” she said.
The hunt led Niang-Casey in November to the Oklahoma Historical Society.
The society told her to call the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City.
The museum told her this month that it had not one, but two moon rocks, one each from Apollo 11 and Apollo 17.
Oklahoma is one of only three states that have moon rocks from those missions on display, Niang-Casey said.
“I felt like I won the lottery,” she said. “I just started screaming in my office.”
Her professor Joseph Gutheinz, a former NASA investigator, said many moon rocks have been lost, stolen or put in storage over the years.
Some of the missing moon rocks have an estimated value of $5 million.
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<img src=" http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/images/zope/quickread.gif " border=0> Hunt for moon rock ends at Oklahoma History Center
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