Bidding Goes Sky-High as Auction of Soviet Space Artifacts Takes in $6.8 Million

The action was brisk Saturday at an auction of Soviet artifacts that chronicle man’s first successful ventures in space, with bidders paying far more than the projected prices of many items.

Among the historic articles sold at Sotheby’s auction house were two authentic space capsules, a satellite and a slew of spacesuits, flight suits and survival gear. The auction’s total take was $6.8 million on 226 lots sold, Sotheby’s said.

One of the top sellers was an original report by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, of his historic 1961 flight around the Earth. It sold for $354,000, 10 times the projected price.

A spacesuit in which Alexi Leonov trained for history’s first spacewalk fetched $255,500, twice the estimate.

Leonov sat high above the auction floor Saturday, watching people bid crazily for the spacesuit.

“I got a very, very peculiar feeling,” he said. “But on the other hand, I got a different feeling, a feeling of reason. That it’s reasonable to hold an auction.”

A cache of moon rocks, retrieved by the Luna 16 robot, sold for $442,500. One bidder paid $68,500 for a prize he might never collect: The Lunokohd 1 lunar surface rover and the Luna 17 descent stage, both still on the moon.

“This is the first item, I believe, ever sold that is on a celestial body,” deadpanned auctioneer David Redden.

The sale drew a packed room of bidders and had phone lines burning up with parties from Australia, Japan, France, Britain, Germany and Italy. They were competing with folks like 10-year-old Bynum Hunter of Greensboro, N.C.

Bynum’s parents shelled out $1,700 for some commemorative Soviet space-race stamps. They also purchased a photograph of cosmonaut Georgi Grechko and his fellow space travelers. The family met Grechko when they visited Russia last summer.

The items in the sale, some of which were once among the most closely guarded secrets in the former Soviet Union, were consigned by private owners, including former cosmonauts and the manufacturers of much of the space gear.

Also sold was the first mannequin in space. “Ivan Ivanovitch,” a dummy cosmonaut, was successfully launched and recovered in the month preceding Gagarin’s pioneering flight. It sold for $190,000.

The first fork and can opener used in space sold for almost $7,000.

The first dogs in space, Belka and Strelka, also had another moment of glory. A plate that was attached to their capsule with instructions for whoever found it sold for $10,000.

The first line of the instructions reads: “If the cabin is upside down, turn it over.”