For $3,495 you can send your pet’s ashes to the moon.
Celestis calls itself “the most compelling memorial service for pets on or off the planet,” allowing customers to send a “symbolic portion” of their pet’s ashes to live forever on the lunar surface. (Prices are the same for human remains, Celestis says.) It’s part of a growing wave of companies capitalizing on the regulatory gray zone the moon inhabits.
A Japanese beverage company sent a payload that looks like one of its Pocari Sweat energy drinks in 2014. Artist Jeff Koons sent 125 mini-sculptures in 2024; each corresponding to an NFT that collectors could buy on Earth. One man even raised $227,000 to put a giant cross on the moon. All told, humans have left nearly 500,000 pounds of stuff on the lunar surface so far, most of it consisting of government-sent lunar landers, surveys and other dead spacecraft.
This explosion of commercial lunar activity is technically legal, says Steve Mirmina, professor of space law at Georgetown University and former NASA attorney.
“I searched and searched the law, and unfortunately there is no law against launching race cars,” he said, referring to Elon Musk’s launch of a Tesla Roadster in 2018. “We don’t have a government agency with the legal authority to regulate what happens on the moon.”
Existing US law does not regulate enough what we actually send to the lunar surface, argues Mirmina in Lawful but Awful: US Regulation of Commercial Activities on the Lunar Surface, published September 19 in Air and Space Law. Without a more sustainable legal framework, we risk turning the moon into “Earth’s garbage can”.
Who rules the moon?
To date, 118 countries are parties to the Outer Space Treaty, which was originally introduced in 1967 during the height of the Cold War. It states that space is free for all countries to use, and that they have a duty to prevent harmful contamination in space.
The Artemis Agreement 2020 further enshrined space sustainability standards in international law. Although not legally binding, it is “soft law” norms that shape best practices in space.
Countries are left to enforce compliance by private space companies within their borders. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration regulates rocket launches, and NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program partners with American companies to deliver payloads to the moon. But Congress has not given any agency the authority to regulate what private companies actually put on those payloads.
“It’s not very useful that they can regulate the launch if they can’t regulate what happens after the rocket is in space,” Mirmina said. “Basically, NASA, the FAA, even the State Department — they’re all pointing at each other, hoping that somebody did something. And then nobody had the legal authority to do anything.”
Real-world costs of uncontrolled commercialization
No one wants to look up at the night sky and see an advertisement for energy drinks. None of this activity has affected our view of the Moon so far, and most of it falls more into the “annoying” category than the “truly reprehensible.” But Mirmina worries that there is no legal certainty to stop truly horrific behavior.
What is currently happening on the moon has already caused outrage from a number of different groups. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren wrote a letter to NASA in 2023 asking the agency to stop 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 that in any other place could be considered disposal on the moon is tantamount to the desecration of this sacred space.”
There is also the question of how to be a good caretaker for future generations. Lunar landings produce something called “plume-surface interactions,” in which exhaust from descending spacecraft kicks up rocks and dust at speeds faster than a bullet. If new payloads land with increasing frequency, the animal ashes of yesterday or the energy drink advertisements could become the projectiles of tomorrow. Unlike the Earth, the Moon has a very thin atmosphere with little erosion, so every element on the surface stays “forever”, as Celestis promises customers.
“They become shrapnel for future lunar missions,” says Mirmina. “It’s just a lot easier to avoid it than it’s ever going to be to try to clean it up.”
Stewardship before it’s too late
Everything is difficult in space, especially agreeing on the right way to behave in a domain that seems so remote and unpredictable. But it’s also a corner of the government with rare bipartisan approval: About three-quarters of Americans have a favorable opinion of NASA, and seven in 10 say it’s essential that the United States continue to be a world leader in space, according to the Pew Research Center. Most also support NASA’s goal of sending astronauts back to the moon in 2028.
“Before we’ve even explored the moon, we’re already throwing up trash to live there forever,” says Mirmina. “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.”