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Quick! Check eBay! There might be some moon rocks for sale.

NASA, the agency that had the know-how to put men on the moon, can’t seem to keep track of some of the stuff the astronauts brought back — not to mention lots of other space memorabilia.

More than 500 items — moon rocks, lunar soil, comet pieces, meteorites and other goodies from outer space — have either been lifted or not returned to the agency, the New York Daily News reported.

Since 1970, NASA has loaned more than 26,000 space samples to researchers and museums. And a report issued by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin released on Dec. 8 admitted that a lack of sufficient controls “increases the risk that these unique resources may be lost.”

The problem came to light last year when NASA realized it couldn’t account for a moon sample it had loaned to an astronomical observatory in Delaware, and Martin decided to do an audit of about 25 percent of the “astromaterials” it had loaned.

"Specifically, “ the report said, as reported by France 24, “we found that NASA records were inaccurate, and that researchers could not account for all samples loaned to them and held samples for extended periods without performing research or returning the samples to NASA."

It turned out that 19 percent of the loanees either still had the material, or couldn’t account for its whereabouts, or had passed it on to someone else. And the audit indicated that hundreds of the items borrowed no longer existed.

One researcher who borrowed 36 moon samples kept them for 16 years after his research was concluded. Another researcher still had nine lunar samples he had in his possession for 35 years and another hadn’t returned 10 chunks of meteorites he borrowed 14 years ago.

NASA’s collection of astromaterials — which include moon rocks and soil; meteorites from asteroids, Mars, and the moon; ions from the outer layers of the sun; dust from comets and interstellar space; and cosmic dust from Earth's stratosphere — totals 140,000 lunar samples, 18,000 meteorite samples and 5,000 solar wind, comet and cosmic dust samples.

The Delaware case wasn’t the first incident of missing samples. In 2002, 218 samples from the moon and meteorites were stolen from the Johnson Space Center in Houston — but later returned. And a researcher lost 18 lunar samples in 2010.

The auditors concluded — surprise! — that NASA needed a better tracking system.

“NASA concurred with our recommendations and promised to take corrective action,” the report said.

—JOE GREENE, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM