Memos unearthed in the Central Intelligence Agency archives show that at the height of Reagan’s renewed Cold War, the CIA’s Deputy Director - future Secretary of Defense Robert Gates - suggested that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration counter Soviet ambitions of a manned mission to Mars by establishing a permanent base on the moon.

Through FOIA, Motherboard’s Jason Koebler managed to receive a handful of investigatory reports from NASA’s Inspector General, covering cases as weird as satellite parts ending up on eBay or a “wheelbarrow full” of sensitive documents ending up in a off-site dumpster. However, no case is stranger - or sadder - than the “stolen moon rocks.”