8

IT WAS a Saturday, and Laura Murray was a 10-year-old girl living in a Cincinnati townhouse. Her mother, giddy with excitement, handed the little girl a small glass vial filled with light-grey dust. It was from the moon, her mother told her.

With it was a handwritten note: “To Laura Ann Murray – Best of Luck – Neil Armstrong Apollo 11.”

Murray, now Laura Cicco, didn’t see the vial for decades, though she kept the autograph in her bedroom. Five years ago, after her parents died, she found it while going through their possessions.

“I came running where my husband was and I said: ‘This is the vial of moon dust. I have it,’ ” Cicco said. “At that time, we didn’t really know what to do with it.”

Last week, Cicco sued Nasa to make sure she can keep what