Who actually owns property from the moon? That’s the question being after a woman from Tennessee named Laura Murray Cicco filed a federal court case against NASA. According to Inverse, the move is a preemptive effort to ensure that she has the rights to a vial of moon dust (yes, moon dust) that she claims was given to her by Neil Armstrong (yes, that Neil Armstrong).
And before you dismiss Cicco as a fraud, there’s actually some evidence backing her up. According to The Washington Post, Cicco’s mother gave her the vial when she was 10 years old, along with a signed note from Armstrong himself that read, “To Laura Ann Murray — Best of Luck — Neil Armstrong Apollo 11.” Cicco says she didn’t find the vial again until five years ago, which, like, what? How do you lose space dust?
Anyway, a handwriting expert has reportedly found Armstrong’s note to be authentic, and while tests of the dust sample came back with mixed results, The Washington Post notes that the court documents don’t rule out the possibility of “lunar origin.”
Cicco claims that Armstrong gave the moon dust to her because he was friends with her father, pilot Tom Murray. Both men, she says, were part of a pilot club known as the Quiet Birdmen.
But while the note, the scientific tests, and Cicco’s father’s relationship with Armstrong all corroborate her claim that the moon dust is real, the bigger problem is whether or not Cicco is actually allowed to keep it.
While Inverse noted that the 2007 NASA Lunar Sample Allocation Guidebook classifies lunar samples as government property, NASA has a history of seizing lunar samples, even going so far as to set up a sting operation against a woman who was selling a lunar sample (no, I’m not kidding). The Register also pointed out that in 2012, President Obama passed a law that allowed astronauts the rights to collect and keep artifacts from space.
It looks like NASA’s got a tough case ahead of them. I can’t wait to watch all of this unfold—but first, I’m going to lament the fact that none of my parents’ friends have ever given me a present from space, because that would’ve made me the coolest 10-year-old ever.
