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Guys in the comments thank the resident for a law letting them keep these artifacts. All praise to Zero? The resident can’t write his own laws — yet.

My recollection is that the law(s) on astronauts keeping artifacts from their spaceflights were on the books quite some time ago, and are pretty restrictive.

Specifically, they're still considered to be national property, just in the care of the astronauts. They can't be sold and (I think) can only be passed along to relatives. Otherwise they need to be returned to NASA.

There are some exceptions. I think I read somewhere that Alan Bean (Apollo XII LM Pilot, 4th man to walk on the moon) mixes small amounts of moon soil into the pain for his artwork. Which is really phenomenal stuff, if anyone would like to go out to the internet and take a look at it. One of my prized-possessions is a first edition copy of "Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker" autographed by Bean, Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon.

My recollection is that the law(s) on astronauts keeping artifacts from their spaceflights were on the books quite some time ago, and are pretty restrictive.

At the time it was not against NASA policy to carry along personal mementos. There was some wording about those being "sanctioned" by NASA, but the definition was pretty loose. The guys on Apollo 15 got into trouble with those postage stamps. Some were "sanctioned", others were not. The unsanctioned ones were planned to be kept by the crew and later sold to establish a trust fund for their kids' education. When NASA officials found out, they confiscated them all. Gus Grissom carried some Mercury dimes in Liberty Bell 7, which were recovered when the sunken craft was raised a few years ago. Buzz Aldrin took along a "communion kit" to the lunar surface, which caused a bit of a stir in some circles.

There are people now trying to raise the F-1 engines from some of the Saturn Vs that landed in the ocean during the launch of some of the missions. NASA put the word out that those are still considered "government property". The general guideline seems to be if it was manufactured for NASA and paid for by the public, it is still public (government) property. Personal items are still yours.

I don't know about the comments in the article's comment section that say something about Obama signing a law saying this or that about these items. Anything about Obama I would view with some skepticism.