Theft at Neil Armstrong Museum; Astronaut's rare gold lunar space module replica stolen!

Neil Armstrong on the moon.

New Delhi: A theft was reported from the Armstrong Air and Space Museum just before midnight on Saturday. Ohio police say that a rare gold replica of the lunar space module has been stolen.

Police in Wapakoneta, in northwest Ohio, responded to an alarm at the museum and discovered that the 5-inch high, solid-gold replica was missing.

Shortly after the historic Apollo moon mission, replicas of the lunar excursion module produced by Cartier were presented to Neil Armstrong and his two fellow astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, in Paris.

Armstrong, a Wapakoneta native, became the first person to step onto the moon's surface in July 1969.

The FBI and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation are assisting Wapakoneta police in an investigation of the theft. Armstrong died in 2012 at the age of 82.

(With PTI inputs)