If you thought Jamie’s Mooncraft Racer was out of this world, you’ll really love this Moon Buggy prototype that was recently discovered in a junkyard in Alabama. This is an actual lunar rover prototype that was built in 1965, with the hope of being the first vehicle to be driven on the moon. Sadly, it never made it to the moon and instead found its way into a scrapyard. Thankfully, someone had the good sense to keep it around! Today, it has been pulled from the junk pile and is now slated to be auctioned off here by RRAuction. Special thanks to Brett P and Peter R for this tip!

So the story goes that this prototype was built by Brown Engineering for NASA. Being a prototype, it never made it to the moon, but it did experience zero gravity in NASA’s KC-135 Zero G aircraft. After it served its purpose as a test bed, Lunar Scientific Survey Module was sold at an auction. It found its way into the new owner’s yard in Blountsville, Alabama and that’s where it stayed until a US Airforce historian came across it and reported it to NASA. They made an attempt to recover it, whatever that means, but didn’t have any success. The current owner and seller has managed to get some of the documents from NASA and has gone to great lengths to prove it is LSSM.

So how does one prove something as simple and basic as this vehicle really is the prototype built for NASA? Well one of the engineers that worked at NASA during the Apollo 11 program has looked it over, checked the measurements and confirms that it’s the real deal. It’s definitely an amazing piece of history and really needs to be preserved, if not restored. I’m curious to see if NASA tries to buy it so they can restore and put it on display, as it is an important piece of space exploration history. I’m not sure what an individual would do with something like this, but I guess it would be fun to take out for a spin! Just look at how happy Wernher von Braun looks driving it!

Read more about it here at Al.com