A Texas state agency has withdrawn its ownership claim to 10 microfilm Bibles that Apollo astronauts took into space, leading an Oklahoma judge to award them to an author who says they were bequeathed to her.
The Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services dropped its claim to the so-called first lunar Bibles last week. The judge ordered them given to Carol Mersch in a court document filed Friday.
Eight of the postage stamp-sized Bibles landed on the moon during the 1971 Apollo 14 mission.
Mersch wrote a book about the Bibles and says a NASA chaplain had promised them to her. But the chaplain had become a ward of the state of Texas before he died, and the Texas agency argued that his son should inherit the Bibles.