Neil ‘gave’ her a vial of moon dust. She’s suing Nasa to keep treasure

is “rightfully” hers. It was an attempt to get ahead of the space agency, which has not taken ownership of the vial but has a history of seizing suspected lunar material from private citizens, says her attorney, Christopher Mchugh.

Cicco claims in her lawsuit, filed in a federal court on Wednesday, that the moon dust was a gift from Armstrong, who was friends with her father, a pilot for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Armstrong and Tom Murray, who spent much of his career flying dignitaries, had both been members of the Quiet Birdmen, a secretive club of male pilots, Cicco said. And sometime in the 1970s, when Armstrong was an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati and the Murray family was living in the city, the astronaut had given the vial of moon dust to his friend’s little girl.

There was no law prohibiting private citizens from owning materials from the moon, Mchugh said, and Cicco was the rightful and legal owner of the moon dust. The proof was Armstrong’s handwritten note, which had been authenticated by a handwriting expert, Mchugh said.

Citing the pending lawsuit, a Nasa spokeswoman said it would be “inappropriate” for the agency to comment.

An expert who analysed the dust found that the sample “may have originated” from the moon’s surface, court documents say. One test found that the dust’s mineralogy was consistent with the known composition of lunar soil. Another test found the sample’s composition similar to “average crust of Earth.”

Despite the varied findings, the expert wrote “It would be difficult to rule out lunar origin” and that it was possible some dust from Earth had “mingled with this likely lunar sample”.

Cicco’s complaint cited a previous case involving a California woman who accused Nasa officials of wrongfully seizing lunar mementos her late husband, an Apollo programme engineer, gave her.

Joann Davis was left two paperweights that contained a rice-grain-sized fragment of moonrock and a piece of the Apollo 11 heat shield. She said Armstrong had given them to Robert Davis. She decided to sell them in 2011 after falling on hard times. She reached out to Nasa, hoping it would help her find a buyer. But an official suspected she had committed a crime by being in possession of contraband or stolen government property. – The Washington Post