Keith's note: I will be seeing Scott Parazynski and Miles O'Brien in Houston next week. On 6 Jan at NASA JSC Scott will formally return the Moon rock I carried to Nepal (and Scott carried to the summit of Mt. Everest) and present a piece of Everest summit to the crew of STS-130. Miles will be the emcee. The STS-130 crew will carry both rocks into orbit and will permanently install them in the new node "Tranquility" that they will attach to the space station. By coincidence, the Moon rock we had in Nepal was collected in the Sea of Tranquility during the Apollo 11 mission.

Preview: Confessions of a Moon Rock Courier

"I facilitated telephone conversations with astronauts aboard the International Space Station and communicated via satellite with the real world on a daily basis. I lived amidst a place with powerful historic resonances. And I encountered a people - Sherpas - with an other-worldly and serene approach to life, teaching one of them to look up at the night sky to track satellites while I watched others treat the moon rock I carried as a sacred object."

Playing With Moon Rocks and Duct Tape at the Dinner Table

"You see, as a precaution of sorts, I had the Nugget [our code name for the Moon rock] blessed in a Buddhist Temple in Pengboche on the trek in to Base Camp. Climbers have all manner of things (including themselves) blessed all the time. But this was special. And how people (westerners and Sherpas) reacted to these little pieces of the Moon really caught Scott and I by surprise. But that's another story I'll have to write about soon."