I wonder how much that penny is worth now

My office mate at work recently posted a photo on our office door. It's a picture of part of the calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Curiosity outside-affiliatelinksnotallowed. The target includes a 1909 Lincoln cent!

Working at the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Hubble Space Telescope project, I have received some little gift items: things like mission patches and photos flown on the space shuttle and actual pieces of MLI (multi-layer insulation) removed from HST during servicing missions.

There probably are space-flown numismatic items out there (recall the scene from The Right Stuff of Gus Grissom spilling coins after his flight and rescue), but now there's one on Mars. We're probably more likely to win a Power Ball jackpot than to see that cent on Earth again. And if it were brought back, it would most likely end up in a museum. But I wonder what it could fetch on the open market.

If I find out any more about the coin, I'll let you know. Anyway, here's that photo.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

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