Wichita ? A former space museum president testified Friday at his theft trial that he sometimes traded his own space and astronaut artifacts to obtain items for the museum.

Max Ary, who co-founded the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center and led it for more than 26 years, is charged with 19 federal counts, including fraud, theft and money laundering.

He is accused of stealing and selling items that belonged to the Hutchinson space museum. His lawyer contends Ary’s personal artifacts and items that didn’t belong to him were accidentally mixed together.

Ary testified Friday that he often used some of his own artifacts to barter for items for the Cosmosphere. He said he obtained 10 Apollo hand controllers, to use on simulators at the museum’s space camp, by trading a small rocket engine that was part of his collection.

Ary testified that he began collecting space artifacts while working at the Noble Planetarium in Fort Worth, Texas, when NASA was disbanding the Apollo program that took men to the moon. Ary said he thought it would be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to obtain a large collection in a short time.

“NASA was so anxious to get rid of this stuff,” he said. “It was a big burden to them.”

Ary testified that he thought the nation’s space program was misunderstood and he wanted to do what he could to help promote it and educate people about it.

Two former astronauts have testified in Ary’s defense, including Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon.

A NASA investigator testified earlier that Ary made about $65,000 selling Cosmosphere and NASA items at space memorabilia auctions in 2000 and 2001.

Ary testified that at one point, he was asked to come to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and help identify 32 van loads of space artifacts.

Once, he said, he took some high school volunteers to Houston from Hutchinson to help inventory space items.

He also estimated that only about 12,000 of an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 pieces of space hardware that came into the Cosmosphere were inventoried.

Ary testified about a Kansas flag he said was given to him by former astronaut Charles Duke Jr., saying he decided to sell the flag as part of a larger effort to focus more on his family.

The museum “had become my baby,” he said.

Duke testified last week that he donated 10 miniature Kansas flags that he had taken to the moon to the Cosmosphere, not to Ary. Duke said Ary later called him and asked for a letter saying Duke had given one of the flags to Ary. Duke eventually wrote a letter stating that he donated the 10 flags to the museum but that it was his understanding one could go to Ary.

Ary, 55, left the Cosmosphere in May 2002, moving to Oklahoma City to become executive director of the Kirkpatrick Science and Air Space Museum at Omniplex, whose trustees announced last week that he had been replaced after his contract expired in August. Ary had been on leave since he was indicted in April.