The main repository for the Apollo moon rocks is the Lunar Sample Building at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houstoun, Texas. For safe keeping, there is also a smaller collection stored at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Most of the rocks are stored in nitrogen to keep them free of moisture. They are only handled indirectly, using special tools.
Moon rocks collected during the course of lunar exploration fare currently considered priceless. In 1993, three small fragments from Luna 16, weighing 0.2 g, were sold for US$ 442,500. In 2002, a safe, containing minute samples of lunar and Martian material, was stolen from the Lunar Sample Building. The samples were recovered; in 2003, during the court case, NASA estimated the value of these samples at about $1 million for 285 g (10 oz) of material. Moon rocks in the form of lunar meteorites, although expensive, are widely sold and traded among private collectors.
Approximately two hundred small samples were mounted and presented to national governments and U.S. governors. At least one of these was later stolen, sold, and recovered.[3] Other samples went to selected museums, including the National Air and Space Museum, the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, the Ontario Science Centre, and to the visitor center at Kennedy Space Center where it is possible to "touch a piece of the moon," which is in fact a small moon rock cemented in a pillar in the center of a bank vault that is toured by visitors. The Tribune Tower in Chicago has a small piece in a display case facing Michigan Ave. The Space Window in Washington National Cathedral incorporates a small moon rock within its stained glass. NASA says that almost 295 kg (650 lb) of the original 382 kg (842 lb) of samples are still in pristine condition in the vault at Johnson Space Center.
NASA has made a number of educational packs comprising a disc of six small rock and soil samples in a lucite disc and a pack of thin petrological sections. They are available for exhibition and educational purposes in many countries, including Great Britain, where the samples are kept by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.(main info on this post from wikipedia)
Genesis Rock returned by the Apollo 15 mission.
