Navajo Nation Demands Delay to Private Mission Placing Human Remains on the Moon

Navajo Nation Demands Delay to Private Mission Placing Human Remains on the Moon

On Monday, an American company is poised to make history as the first private U.S. company to launch a mission to send a lander to the surface of the Moon.

One of the payloads include human DNA from a number of science fiction notables.

On Monday (Jan. 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, will potentially deliver a symbolic portion of remains to the surface of the moon as one of their services, with Celestis’ precious cargo of cremains and DNA riding on its Tranquility mission, the company’s second lunar flight.

A second Celestis payload will also fly on the Vulcan rocket’s Centaur upper stage to head out beyond the Earth-moon system into deep space, to establish the most remote human presence among the stars.

That Celestis Enterprise Flight will include cremated remains and/or DNA material from numerous “Star Trek” icons such as Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, series creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry, “2001: A Space Odyssey’s” 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.

However, representatives of the Navajo Nation have sent a letter demanding the mission be delayed, as sending the human-sourced materials would be desecrating “the sacredness of the moon.”

Leaders of Navajo Nation sent a letter Dec. 21 to NASA and the U.S. Department of Transportation objecting to plans for human remains to be carried aboard the rocket in order to be laid to rest on the lunar surface. Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, requested the launch window to be delayed until tribe leaders can meet with NASA and other government leaders to discuss their concerns.

In an updated letter on Thursday, Nygren announced plans to meet Friday afternoon with the White House, USDOT and NASA.

“The sacredness of the moon is deeply embedded in the spirituality and heritage of many Indigenous cultures, including our own,” Nygren said in a statement. “The placement of human remains on the moon is a profound desecration of this celestial body revered by our people.”

There are already 96 bags of human waste on the Moon ,and it holds the remains of the founder of astrogeology famous for identifying Earth had been impacted by satellites in the past.

Gene Shoemaker was a US geologist, who studied terrestrial craters and discovered many comets and planets. When he died his ashes were transported to the Moon in a capsule on board the Lunar Prospector space probe. On the capsule, which had been specially designed to be taken to the moon, was a quote from Romeo and Juliet:

And, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Shoemaker will soon be in good company. And as I admire him as a scientist as well as the actors who brought Star Trek to life, I assert that placement on the Moon is appropriate. My claim holds no less weight than those of anyone in the Navajo nation.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has responded, its argument coming down to “private enterprise.”

In a pre-launch science briefing on Thursday (Jan. 4), NASA representatives addressed the controversy over the payloads containing human remains being included on the mission, noting that the mission is a private, commercial effort and that NASA has merely contracted for its scientific payloads to be transported to the moon.

“We don’t have the framework for telling them what they can and can’t fly,” said Chris Culbert, Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “The approval process doesn’t run through NASA for commercial missions.”

Culbert added that the private companies launching payloads as a part of the CLPS program “don’t have to clear those payloads” before launch. “So these are truly commercial missions, and it’s up to them to sell what they sell,” Culbert said.

Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration at the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, acknowledged that these commercial missions could lead to further controversies.

“With these new opportunities and new ways of doing business, we recognize that some non-NASA commercial payloads can be a cause for concern to some communities,” Kearns said. “And those communities may not understand that these missions are commercial and they’re not U.S. government missions, like the ones that we’re talking about.”

If our nation stays ahead in the space race, it will be because of private enterprise. I can just imagine the woke entities scattered throughout the Biden administration putting a halt to this project because of claims of “sacred space” if this were a government project.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.