DALLAS — A handwritten card containing a Bible verse that Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin used during a lunar Holy Communion service is up for sale today at a space-related auction.
Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, read the verse privately during the 1969 mission while using a communion kit furnished by his church. Heritage Auction Galleries calls the moment the “first religious sacrament performed on another heavenly body.”
Aldrin had wanted to broadcast the verse back to Earth, but a lawsuit by an atheist halted his plans.
The weathered card, expected to bring at least $50,000, is one of 43 moon-trip items consigned to the auction house by Aldrin, including his personal slide rule, a Texas state flag and a section of his Apollo 11 descent monitoring chart.
Howard Weinberger, senior space consultant for Dallas-based Heritage, said the card will appeal to private collectors, historical and religious institutions.
“Anything that was on the surface of the moon is deemed exceptionally rare,” Weinberger said. “For the six missions that landed on the moon, if you could gather the few items taken to the surface you could fill a very small piece of carry-on luggage.”
Aldrin, 77, wrote about the religious moment in his 1973 book, “Return to Earth.” During his first idle moment on the mission, he was eager to express his Christian faith and pulled out the small amount of wine and a wafer, given to him by Webster (Texas) Presbyterian Church.
“With them and a small chalice from the kit, I took communion on the moon, reading to myself from a small card I carried on which I had written the portion of the Book of John used in the traditional communion ceremony,” Aldrin wrote.
Fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong watched but did not participate in Aldrin’s celebration of Holy Communion, the act of worship that Christians trace to the last meal Jesus had with his disciples.
Aldrin planned to recite the verse and so it could be heard on Earth in a broadcast. But he was asked not to read the verse publicly because of a legal challenge NASA faced from famed atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
Astronauts from a previous mission, Apollo 8, read the biblical creation story from Genesis, prompting O’Hair’s suit against NASA. Though the suit was eventually rejected, NASA was nervous about further religious activities in space.
Though he never broadcast the New Testament reading, Aldrin read notes from his card: “Houston This is Eagle The LM Pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. Over. I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way.”
Below the initial verse on the card that Aldrin planned to read, John 15:5, is a passage in lighter ink from Psalms that Aldrin later quoted later during a television broadcast by the astronauts the evening before they splashed down.
The passage, Psalms 8:3-4 reads, ” When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou has ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him? And the Son of Man, that thou visitest Him?”
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