By David Klepper
The Kansas City Star

TOPEKA — The man credited with transforming the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson into a world-class museum has been accused of looting artifacts from its collection and selling them at auction.

In a federal indictment released Thursday, prosecutors say Max Ary sold or traded dozens of artifacts, some on loan from NASA, for about $180,000 between 1999 and 2001. Cosmosphere staff found that 100 items were missing from its 12,000-item collection during a 2003 inventory. The indictment did not link Ary to all of those items, however.

Ary's attorney said the government's case had inconsistencies and Ary would defend his innocence.

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center boasts the largest collection of American space artifacts outside the Smithsonian Institution and the largest assortment of Russian space equipment outside Moscow. Many of the items are on loan from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The museum attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year — no small feat in a county of 65,000 people.

The Cosmosphere provided technical expertise for the filming of Apollo 13 and assisted in the restoration of the Mercury 7 [sic] capsule, which rested on the ocean floor for 30 years before it was recovered.

Ary's indictment highlights the little-known but vibrant trade in space-related artifacts. Astronaut gloves, scraps of spacecraft metal and even astronaut food routinely fetch high sums at auctions. In 1999, an astronaut's patch worn on the moon sold at Christie's auction house for $310,000.