If astronauts and space collectors alike were surprised when NASA challenged the sale of Jim Lovell's Apollo 13 flight checklist earlier this year, it was only because they had assumed such items were protected by official NASA policy. The agency told Heritage Auctions it needed proof of Lovell's ownership of the document. "We had seen similar pages sold from Buzz Aldrin's checklist," says Robert Pearlman, founder of collectSPACE.com, "so nobody really expected this one to go astronomical-pardon the pun. But when it sold for so much"-more than $388,000-"someone at NASA must have taken notice."
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