by For better or worse, the moon is officially open for business.
On Monday (January 8), United Launch Alliance’s shiny new Vulcan Centaur rocket will launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander and the Celestis and Elysium memorial payloads containing human remains and DNA.
Two memorial companies, Elysium Space and Celestis, could deliver a symbolic portion of remains to the surface of the moon as one of their services, with a precious cargo of cremains and Celestis DNA on its Tranquility mission, the company’s second lunar flight.
The second Celestis payload will also fly on the Vulcan rocket’s Centaur upper stage to go beyond the Earth’s Moon system into deep space, to establish the most remote human presence among the stars. That Celestis Enterprise Flight will include the cremated remains and/or DNA material of numerous “Star Trek” icons such as Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, “2001: A Space Odyssey’s” series creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry. VFX guru, Douglas Trumbull, as well as the DNA of current ULA CEO Tory Bruno, his wife Rebecca, several former presidents of the United States, and many others.
But not everyone is exactly rejoicing about the upcoming flight. As Arizona Public Radio reported on December 28, the President of the Navajo Nation, Buu Nygrenunhappy with the notion of human remains being deposited on the moon and is formally asking NASA to postpone this January’s launch because of the space agency’s promise to advise them before authorizing any future memorial flights.
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In a December 21 letter to NASA and the US Department of Transportation (USDOT), Nygren expressed his views on the matter. “It is important to emphasize that the moon holds a sacred position in many Native cultures, including ours,” Nygren wrote. “We see it as part of our spiritual heritage, something that is revered and respected. The act of depositing human remains and other materials, which could be seen as discarded marine material elsewhere , on the moon to displace these saints. space.”
Nygren also said the Navajo Nation believes both NASA and the USDOT should have consulted with them before authorizing a company to transport human remains to the moon.
However, despite the strong objections of the Navacho Nation, this is not technically a NASA-run mission. The mission is the first launch of the Vulcan Centaur and the first mission under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which seeks to leverage private companies to help place agency-led science payloads on the surface of the moon
The mission is actually a private commercial launch by ULA and Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology that could be made possible through CLPS, and NASA has no jurisdiction over exactly what additional payloads are included.
According to Nygren, this is an ongoing concern that “echoes back to the late 1990s, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sent the Lunar Prospector, carrying the remains of [geologist] Eugene Shoemaker, to the moon. At the time, the President of the Navajo Nation, Albert Hale, expressed our objections to this action. In response, NASA issued a formal apology and promised to consult with tribes before authorizing additional missions that carry human remains to the moon.”
In that particular case, the Commercial Space Office, operating under the US Department of Transportation, may have been negligent in failing to consult with tribes before approving the launch’s official payload certification.
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Nygren reminded the parties that NASA had previously promised to notify the Navajo Nation of memorial flights and that the Biden administration had promised to consult on tribal concerns of this nature, as outlined in the Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and Relationship Strengthening Nation-to-Nation in January. 26, 2021.
“This memorandum reinforced the commitment to Executive Order 13175 of November 6, 2000,” explained Nygren. “Furthermore, the Memorandum of Understanding on Interagency Coordination and Cooperation to Protect Native Sacred Sites, which you and several other members of the Administration signed in November 2021, further emphasizes the requirement for such consultation. “
In a pre-launch science briefing on Thursday (January 4), NASA representatives addressed the controversy surrounding the payloads that included human remains in the mission. Chris Culbert, CLPS program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said the private companies that send payloads as part of the program, however, “don’t have to clear those payloads” before launching. “So these are real commercial missions and they have an obligation to sell what they sell,” Culbert added. “We don’t have the framework to tell them what they can and can’t fly.”
NASA representatives added that an interagency group within the US government is meeting to discuss the Navajo Nation’s objections.
Celestis, for his part, does not consider those objections to be strong.
“The regulatory process that approves space missions does not consider adherence to the principles of any religion in the process for obvious reasons. No single religion can or should dictate whether a space mission should be approved,” said Celestis CEO and co-founder Charles Chafer. in an emailed statement to Space.com.
“No one, and no religion, owns the moon, and, if the beliefs of the world’s many religions are considered, it is quite likely that no missions would ever be approved,” said Chafer. “Simply put, we do not and have never allowed religious beliefs to dictate humanity’s space endeavors – there is not and should not be a religious test.”
Correction: This story was updated at 6:21 pm ET to reflect that Celestis has a cremated payload and DNA ride to the moon on the Peregrine lunar lander, as well as its payload on the initial Vulcan Centaur flight. It was updated again at 8:50 pm ET to include the statement from Charles Chafer Celestis.
