A 1909 Lincoln Cent will be touching down on the surface of Mars with the 2012 “Curiosity” NASA rover – scheduled to land at 1:17 AM EDT Monday Aug 6[SUP]th[/SUP] (10:17 PM Sunday PDT August 5[SUP]th[/SUP]). The 1909 Lincoln Cent is aboard as a calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager instrument. If this coin could be recovered sometime in the future and then certified by PCGS.... what a prize! There is an image of a 1909 Lincoln Cent on page 6A of this Friday's USA Today. It has "NASA" printed below it, so I am assuming it is the actual image of the coin on-board. It has some red high-lights and looks AU-58... but it is hard tell the grade from the small image. Could be a VDB or Doubled Die, however. No more bouncing cushion ball landings as in the past. This rover will be landing like Buck Rogers by an eight –engine jetpack "sky crane" that will gently lower it to the surface. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BudlaGh1A0o
I wonder where they got it, because it would be pretty funny if it turned out to be a Chinese fake lol
Hope everything goes well and touchdown is a sucess, I'll be watching . Here's an earlier thread on this with an article linked. http://www.cointalk.com/t200294/
Why 1909? A 2012 would have been less expensive and served the same purpose. Unless they want aliens to think we were there 100 years earlier than we really were.
[ If this coin could be recovered sometime in the future and then certified by PCGS.... what a prize! What if the aliens get it graded by one of their own reputable tpg's, and then we retrieve it. That would be worth a lot. As long as they dont just self slab it with a 70 .
I hope they can focus a camera on it ( I seriously doubt ) as I would like to see how it tones/corrodes on Mars
