On the precipice of humankind's first step on the moon, Neil Armstrong stood on the lunar module's ladder and described the ground’s peculiar texture. “It’s almost like a powder,” he told the Apollo Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.

Ten minutes later, he scooped up a mound of this lunar dust—the first sample ever collected from the surface of another world. Now, more than 50 years later, a pinch of that dust is going to a new owner: An anonymous buyer who paid just over $500,000 at auction to own a piece of history.

NASA has long maintained that the lunar rocks and dust collected during the Apollo missions are government property that’s not allowed to