By Joe Supan (Enriched & Expanded Edition)
For $3,495, you can immortalize your beloved pet by sending a portion of its cremated remains to the moon. A company called Celestis—which markets itself as "the most compelling pet memorial service on or off the planet"—promises that customers can purchase a "symbolic portion" of lunar real estate where their departed companion’s ashes will rest for eternity. (The pricing structure, the company notes, is identical for human remains.)
While paying to scatter ashes across the cosmos sounds like science fiction, it is part of a rapidly escalating wave of commercial enterprises rushing to capitalize on a profound regulatory gray area. The moon, long a symbol of untamed mystery and a scientific sanctuary, is quickly transforming into a celestial dumping ground.
From energy drink marketing stunts and modern art installations to crowdfunded religious monuments, the lunar surface is undergoing an unprecedented wave of privatization. Yet, as private aerospace companies push the boundaries of what is possible, space law experts are sounding the alarm. Without an urgent update to domestic and international legal frameworks, humanity risks turning Earth’s closest celestial neighbor into an unregulated cosmic landfill.
Main Facts: The Privatization of the Lunar Surface
The modern commercialization of the moon is no longer a distant theoretical concern; it is happening in real-time, fueled by the lowering cost of rocket payloads and an absence of restrictive oversight.
To date, humanity has left nearly 500,000 pounds of material on the lunar surface. The vast majority of this tonnage consists of historic government-sent artifacts: defunct lunar landers, robotic surveyors, and abandoned scientific equipment left behind by NASA, the Soviet Union, and other space agencies during the space race.
However, the nature of what is being left behind has shifted dramatically. In recent years, private companies, artists, and eccentric entrepreneurs have begun treating the moon as a billboard, an art gallery, and a private cemetery.
Key milestones in this commercial rush include:
- Corporate Advertising: In 2014, a Japanese beverage manufacturer launched a payload designed to mimic one of its popular energy drink cans, planting commercial branding directly onto lunar soil.
- Modern Art and NFTs: In 2024, high-profile artist Jeff Koons launched 125 miniature sculptures to the moon aboard a commercial lander. Each sculpture corresponded to a digital non-fungible token (NFT) that collectors could purchase back on Earth.
- Crowdfunded Monuments: Individual entrepreneurial efforts have also gained traction. Notably, one organizer successfully raised over $227,000 via crowdfunding campaigns to land a massive physical cross on the lunar surface.
- Memorial Services: Companies like Celestis now routinely offer commercial memorial flights, sending human and pet ashes into deep space or onto the lunar regolith.
According to Steve Mirmina, a professor of space law at Georgetown University and a former NASA attorney, this explosion of commercial activity is entirely legal under current interpretations of the law.
"I searched and searched the law, and unfortunately, there’s no law against launching race cars," Mirmina said, referencing Elon Musk’s headline-grabbing 2018 launch of a Tesla Roadster into heliocentric orbit. "We don’t have a government agency with the legal authority to regulate what happens on the moon."
Mirmina detailed these alarming regulatory gaps in a paper published on September 19 in Air and Space Law, titled "Lawful but Awful: U.S. Regulation of Commercial Activities on the Lunar Surface." Without immediate legislative intervention, he warns, humanity is poised to turn the moon into "Earth’s junk drawer."
Chronology of Lunar Exploration and Legal Precedents
To understand how we arrived at a point where corporate branding and private memorials can be legally deposited on the moon, one must look back at the legislative history governing outer space.
1967: The Outer Space Treaty
At the height of the Cold War, the international community recognized the need to prevent celestial bodies from becoming nuclear flashpoints. This resulted in the Outer Space Treaty, formally known as the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.
Ratified by 118 countries, the treaty established foundational principles:
- Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is free for exploration and use by all nations.
- Space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
- Parties to the treaty bear international responsibility for national space activities, whether carried out by governmental agencies or non-governmental entities.
- Countries have a fundamental duty to avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.
While the treaty successfully kept the Cold War out of active space combat, it was drafted at a time when space exploration was exclusively the domain of heavily resourced superpowers. It never anticipated a multi-billion-dollar commercial space industry or retail consumers buying space real estate for pet ashes.
2020: The Artemis Accords
As commercial space ventures began to accelerate, the United States and several partner nations established the Artemis Accords in 2020. Designed to build upon the Outer Space Treaty, these accords enshrine norms of space sustainability, transparency, and the preservation of historic landing sites into international frameworks.
However, the Artemis Accords constitute "soft law." They are not legally binding treaties; rather, they serve as political commitments and best-practice guidelines. Consequently, they lack enforcement mechanisms to penalize bad actors or stop non-signatory nations and private entities from exploiting regulatory loopholes.
2024–2025: The Regulatory Breaking Point
By the mid-2020s, private companies were landing payloads on the moon with increasing regularity, outpacing the legal frameworks governing them. The launch of Jeff Koons’ sculptures in 2024 and recurring memorial payload flights exposed the stark reality: while rocket launches are heavily monitored, the payloads themselves operate in a wild west of non-regulation.
Supporting Data: Public Opinion and the Scale of Lunar Accumulation
Despite the growing commercialization of space, public support for space exploration remains remarkably robust. However, this enthusiasm is tempered by a desire for responsible stewardship.
According to a comprehensive survey conducted by the Pew Research Center:
- Roughly 75% of Americans hold a favorable opinion of NASA and government-backed space exploration.
- 7 out of 10 Americans believe it is essential for the United States to maintain its status as a global leader in space exploration.
- There is broad public backing for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return human astronauts to the lunar surface.
Simultaneously, the physical footprint on the moon continues to expand. The nearly 500,000 pounds of artificial objects currently resting on the lunar surface represent decades of scientific endeavor. Yet, as private payloads join historic scientific hardware, the composition of this lunar debris is shifting from state-sponsored science to commercial novelties.
Official Responses and Jurisdictional Paralysis
The core issue plaguing lunar regulation is not a lack of concern, but a severe case of jurisdictional buck-passing.
In the United States, regulatory duties are fractured across multiple federal agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) governs the safety of commercial rocket launches and re-entries. NASA manages initiatives like the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, partnering with private American aerospace firms to ferry scientific equipment to the moon. Meanwhile, the State Department handles international treaties and diplomatic relations concerning outer space.
However, as Mirmina points out, Congress has failed to grant any single agency the legal authority to regulate what private companies actually pack into those payloads once they leave Earth’s atmosphere.
"It’s not very useful that they can regulate launch if they can’t regulate what happens after the rocket’s in space," Mirmina observed. "Basically, NASA, the FAA, even the State Department—they’re all kind of pointing at each other, hoping somebody did something. And then nobody had the legal authority to do anything."
This regulatory vacuum has left Indigenous communities and cultural groups entirely unprotected against actions they view as deeply offensive. In 2023, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren penned a formal letter to NASA, fiercely urging the agency to halt the practice of sending human remains to the moon.
"It is crucial to emphasize that the Moon holds a sacred position in many Indigenous cultures, including ours," Nygren wrote. "The act of depositing human remains and other materials, which could be perceived as discards in any other location, on the moon is tantamount to desecration of this sacred space."
Despite such impassioned pleas, federal agencies have been powerless to intervene, bound by a statutory framework that ends the moment a rocket clears the upper atmosphere.
Implications: Shrapnel, Stewardship, and the Future of Space
While an energy drink advertisement or a retail pet memorial on the moon might currently strike most observers as more "annoying" than "reprehensible," the long-term physical and cultural implications of unchecked lunar commercialization are severe.
The Physics of Lunar Destruction
Unlike Earth, which boasts a thick, protective atmosphere that burns up incoming debris and erodes physical artifacts through wind and water, the moon has an extremely thin exosphere. It experiences virtually no atmospheric erosion.
Consequently, every item placed on the lunar surface stays there essentially forever—just as companies like Celestis promise their grieving customers.
Worse still, commercial payloads actively endanger future missions through a phenomenon known as plume-surface interactions. When a spacecraft descends and fires its thrusters to land on the moon, the exhaust gases violently kick up lunar rocks and regolith, launching jagged particles at velocities exceeding the speed of a bullet.
When new payloads land with increasing frequency, yesterday’s novelty items—whether pet ashes capsules, commercial packaging, or art installations—will inevitably become high-speed shrapnel.
"They become shrapnel for future lunar missions," warns Mirmina. "It’s just a lot easier to prevent it than it’s going to ever be to try to clean it up."
A Call for Preemptive Stewardship
Space exploration has historically been an area of rare bipartisan consensus, capturing the collective imagination of humanity. But as private enterprise muscles its way into the cosmos, the window to establish ethical boundaries is rapidly closing.
Before permanent human habitats are established, and before future generations venture out to study the pristine environment of our closest neighbor, space policy experts argue that international bodies and national legislatures must step up.
"Before we’ve really even explored the moon, we’re already tossing up junk to live on there forever," Mirmina concludes. "If you care about space or stewardship or the environment, we should preserve it for future explorers and not ruin it before they get there."
Without swift legislative reform, the moon risks evolving from a beacon of human scientific achievement into an unregulated monument to terrestrial consumerism—a cautionary tale of how humanity exported its worst garbage-disposal habits to the stars.
