{"id":45577,"date":"2024-01-08T00:05:40","date_gmt":"2024-01-07T16:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/navajo-objection-to-flying-human-ashes-to-the-moon-wont-delay-launch\/"},"modified":"2024-01-08T00:05:40","modified_gmt":"2024-01-07T16:05:40","slug":"navajo-objection-to-flying-human-ashes-to-the-moon-wont-delay-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/navajo-objection-to-flying-human-ashes-to-the-moon-wont-delay-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Navajo objection to flying human ashes to the Moon won\u2019t delay launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Science instruments aren\u2019t the only things hitching a ride to the Moon on a commercial lunar lander that is ready for launch on Monday. Two companies specializing in \u201cspace burials\u201d are also sending cremated human remains to the Moon, and this doesn\u2019t sit well with the Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

The Navajo people, one of the nation\u2019s largest indigenous groups, hold the Moon sacred, and putting human remains on the lunar surface amounts to desecration, according to Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sacredness of the Moon is deeply embedded in the spirituality and heritage of many Indigenous cultures, including our own,\u201d Nygren said in a statement. \u201cThe placement of human remains on the Moon is a profound desecration of this celestial body revered by our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Nygren wrote a letter to NASA and the Department of Transportation, which licenses commercial space launches, requesting a postponement of the flight to the Moon. The human remains in question are mounted to the robotic Peregrine lander, built and owned by a Pittsburgh-based company named Astrobotic, poised for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on top of United Launch Alliance\u2019s Vulcan rocket.<\/p>\n

This is the second time a US spacecraft has gone to the Moon with human remains aboard. In 1998, NASA\u2019s Lunar Prospector mission launched with a small capsule containing the ashes of Eugene Shoemaker, a pioneer in planetary geology. NASA intentionally crashed the spacecraft into the Moon in 1999, leaving Shoemaker\u2019s ashes permanently on the surface.<\/p>\n

At that time, officials from the Navajo Nation objected to the scattering of Shoemaker\u2019s ashes on the Moon. NASA promised to consult with tribal officials before another spacecraft flew to the Moon with human remains. A big part of Nygren\u2019s recent complaint was the lack of dialogue on the matter before this mission.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cThis act disregards past agreements and promises of respect and consultation between NASA and the Navajo Nation, notably following the Lunar Prospector mission in 1998,\u201d Nygren said in a statement. He added that the request for consultation is \u201crooted in a desire to ensure that our cultural practices, especially those related to the Moon and the treatment of the deceased, are respected.\u201d<\/p>\n

An oversight<\/h2>\n

Officials from the White House and NASA met with Nygren on Friday to discuss his concerns. Speaking with reporters after the meeting, Nygren said he believes it was an oversight that federal officials didn\u2019t meet with the Navajo Nation at an earlier stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think being able to consult into the future is one of the things that they\u2019re going to try to work on,\u201d he told reporters Friday. While Nygren said that was good to hear, he added that \u201cwe were given no reassurance that the human remains were not going to be transported to the Moon on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Removing the human remains would delay the launch at least several weeks. It would require removing Astrobotic\u2019s lunar lander from the top of the Vulcan rocket, taking it back to a clean room facility, and opening the payload fairing to provide access to the spacecraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not going to remove the human remains and keep them here on Earth where they were created, but instead, we were just told that a mistake has happened, we\u2019re sorry, into the future we\u2019re going to try to consult with you,\u201d Nygren said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe take concerns expressed from the Navajo Nation very, very seriously,\u201d said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA\u2019s science directorate. \u201cAnd we think we\u2019re going to be continuing this conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Navajo Nation<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Astrobotic\u2019s mission is different from Lunar Prospector in one important sense. The Peregrine lander is privately owned, while Lunar Prospector was a government spacecraft. NASA has a $108 million contract with Astrobotic to deliver the agency\u2019s science payloads to the Moon as a commercial service. Astrobotic\u2019s mission is the first time a US company will attempt to land a commercial spacecraft on the Moon.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

While Nygren argues that NASA\u2019s role as Astrobotic\u2019s anchor customer should give the agency some influence over decision-making, the government\u2019s only legal authority in overseeing the mission is through the Federal Aviation Administration.<\/p>\n

The FAA is responsible for ensuring that commercial launches, like the Vulcan rocket flight on Monday, don\u2019t put public safety at risk. The launch licensing process also includes an FAA review to ensure a launch would not jeopardize US national security, foreign policy interests, or international obligations.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our own missions \u2026 NASA works to be very mindful of potential concerns for any work that we\u2019ll do on the Moon,\u201d Kearns said. \u201cIn this particular case \u2026 NASA really doesn\u2019t have involvement or oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n

A tenet of NASA\u2019s strategy for lunar exploration is to partner with commercial companies. In the end, NASA wants to be one of many customers buying transportation services to the Moon, reducing costs to taxpayers.<\/p>\n

Astrobotic sold capacity on its lander to several customers, mainly NASA, which is sending a radiation sensor, spectrometers, and a laser retroreflector array to the Moon aboard the Peregrine lander. This is the first launch for NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program established in 2018 to purchase flights to the Moon for scientific and technology demonstration experiments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are truly commercial missions,\u201d said Chris Culbert, NASA\u2019s CLPS program manager. \u201cIt\u2019s up to them to sell what they can sell. But in the process of making sure that our payloads needs are being met, we obviously have a lot of discussions about how the payloads fit together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mission also includes a small lunar rover developed at Carnegie Mellon University and five tiny robots\u2014each less than a tenth of a pound\u2014from the Mexican Space Agency that will deploy onto the lunar surface. Some of Astrobotic\u2019s customers are sending commemorative plaques and mementos to the Moon.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Then there are Celestis and Elysium Space. These two companies gathered human ashes from families paying to send the remains of their loved ones for an eternal stay on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

Celestis, headquartered in Houston, says it has 20 completed \u201cmemorial spaceflights\u201d since the 1990s. \u201cIf you\u2019ve ever longed to travel in space, or stepped outside on a starry night and felt at home, we invite you to consider one of the following memorial spaceflight services for yourself or a loved one,\u201d Celestis writes on its website.<\/p>\n

Launching your loved one\u2019s ashes to the Moon creates a \u201cpermanent memorial on a distant but constantly viewable world,\u201d Celestis says. The company charges $13,000 to land a small amount of human remains on the Moon.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Technicians prepare capsules containing ashes and human DNA for liftoff on United Launch Alliance\u2019s Vulcan rocket.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Celestis\/United Launch Alliance<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

This mission, which Celestis calls Tranquility Flight, will carry the cremated remains or DNA of 66 people to Astrobotic\u2019s landing site at Gruithuisen Domes, the site of an ancient volcanic eruption on the near side of the Moon. The list of participants on Tranquility Flight include science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and Star Trek <\/em>creator Gene Roddenberry.<\/p>\n

Elysium Space has not released details about exactly what it will send to the Moon on the Peregrine lander. Astrobotic\u2019s description of Elysium\u2019s payload says it will \u201cdeliver a symbolic portion of remains\u201d to the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

Nygren said the Navajo Nation does not oppose rocket launches or space exploration, but he is concerned about the lack of oversight and regulation of non-NASA commercial payloads.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs stewards of our culture and traditions, it is our responsibility to voice our grievances when actions are taken that could desecrate sacred spaces and disregard deeply held cultural beliefs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Charles Chafer, CEO of Celestis, pushed back on the Navajo Nation objections in an interview with Marcia Smith of SpacePolicyOnline.com. \u201cNobody owns the Moon\u201d and there is \u201cno religious test for the conduct of space activities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe reject the whole premise that this is somehow desecration,\u201d Chafer said. \u201cWe handle these capsules reverently. We do not scatter them on the lunar surface. We object to the entire characterization of our service that I read in the letter. It\u2019s the antithesis of desecration. It\u2019s celebration.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Science instruments aren\u2019t the only things hitching a ride to the Moon on a commercial lunar lander that is ready for launch on Monday. Two companies specializing in \u201cspace burials\u201d are also sending cremated human remains to the Moon, and this doesn\u2019t sit well with the Navajo Nation. The Navajo people, one of the nation\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4519,25,625,9745,750,364],"class_list":["post-45577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-celestis","tag-launch","tag-moon","tag-navajo","tag-united-launch-alliance","tag-vulcan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}