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The price of space junk inched closer to the moon on Friday after a hand controller from the Apollo 15 mission sold at auction for $610,063 — an apparent new record. The joystick assembly from the fourth US manned lunar landing was snapped up by an online bidder whose identity was not disclosed by RR Auction, a Massachusetts auction house specializing in rare collectibles. Its believed to be the most ever paid, at a public auction at least, for a piece of a NASA spacecraft, Robert Pearlman, founder of the space history and memorabilia website collectSPACE.com, told AFP. The spring-loaded hand controller with attached cable previously belonged to Apollo 15 commander David Scott, who removed it as a souvenir from the lunar landing module prior to the 1971 missions return to Earth.