Nasa widow to auction space memorabilia

The widow of a Nasa technician who was killed while fuelling a Titan rocket is putting his space memorabilia up for auction.

The collection, belonging to Yvonne Harvey, whose husband Bob died while working as a rocket fuel technician on the Nasa space programme at Cape Canaveral, will go under the hammer at Grand Auctions in Folkestone, Kent, on 19 September.

Mr Harvey, 60, was found dead on a platform near the top of the Titan rocket in Florida in June 1997 with a six-inch gash to the back of his head, a spokeswoman for the auction house said.

He is commemorated by a brick in the Spacewalk of Honour for his work on the space programme but the mystery of what happened has never been fully explained, despite his wife's attempts to get at the truth, the spokeswoman said.

Items for sale which are connected with Mr Harvey's 30-year career include a US flag flown for the launch of the shuttle Columbia, presented to Mrs Harvey by her husband's colleagues, and a photograph of the Gemini 11 lift-off in 1966, piloted by astronauts Charles "Pete" Conrad and Richard Gordon.

The spokeswoman said: "Conrad went on to become the third man to walk on the moon as commander of Apollo 12, while Gordon mapped the surface from the orbiting command module."

::The auction will be held in the Folkestone Enterprise Centre, Shearway Business Park, Folkestone, at 6pm on September 19.