A legendary NFT auction went to the moon more than 60 years ago, in a manner of speaking. Some of NASA Astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 legacy — including materials and equipment from his trailblazing journey to and steps on the moon — is going on auction on Tuesday, July 26, according to a press release from Sotheby’s, the legacy auction house.

To commemorate their upcoming Geek Week event, Sotheby’s is holding an auction called “Buzz Aldrin: American Icon”. With NFT Expoverse’s planned space-related giveaways, in addition to a host of space-themed NFT projects dropping earlier this month, space fans in the NFT community have plenty to get excited about.

NFTs can help preserve NASA’s Apollo 11

Headlining the American Icon auction is the flight jacket Aldrin wore during the Apollo 11 mission, along with the infamous broken circuit breaker from the mission that made the mission an even more tense affair. These pieces — along with other memorabilia from Aldrin’s storied career included in the auction — are all expected to fetch prices well into the millions.

But what does this all have to do with NFTs? The broken circuit breaker from Apollo 11, in addition to the felt tip pen Aldrin used to write on the spaceship, are both set to come with an NFT. These NFTs were minted by MIRA as a MIRAImage onto the Ethereum blockchain, providing these otherwise nondescript items with a surefire proof of authenticity.

MIRA employs “sophisticated imaging technology and deep learning algorithms,” according to its website, and it can link digital signatures to physical objects by scanning them at the microscopic level. The minting firm also claims that once a physical object is minted as an NFT, it’ll remain on the blockchain forever — regardless of the object’s physical condition. Thanks to this, collectors picking up these otherwise hard-to-authenticate items are free to purchase or resell them with relative ease.