Today, Monday, at 8:18 in the morning (Spanish peninsular time), the Peregrine mission was launched into space, a project owned by the North American aerospace company Astrobotic. Its main objective is to land on the Moon, a fact that could mark a historical milestone since it would be the first time that a private company achieved it.
The descent maneuver is scheduled for February 23, and the place chosen for the landing is a region called Sinus Viscositatis on the visible side of the Moon.
Among the instruments carried by the Peregrine spacecraft are various NASA scientific equipment. The cargo also includes human remains, basically ashes and DNA samples, coming from two companies specialized in unique funerary memorials, a fact that has fueled controversy over the issue of the use of space.
The contract between NASA and the company that owns the mission (Astrobotic) includes the transportation of five scientific instruments, with which the North American space agency hopes to obtain relevant data within the framework of the Artemis project (the United States space program that has as the main objective the human return to the surface of the Moon).
Specifically, NASA teams aboard Peregrine will try to locate water molecules, measure the radiation present at the landing site and also study the so-called lunar exosphere (a thin layer of gases found just above the lunar surface).
NASA points out that the place where Pregerine will land (a region called Sinus Viscositatis) is interesting since there are geological structures that, on Earth, require large volumes of water for their formation.
However, it is not Peregrine’s scientific instruments that have generated the greatest public interest. Two funeral service companies have contracted to transport human remains to the Moon. These are the companies Celestis and Elysium Space.
For its part, the cargo from Celestis includes the ashes of about 70 people and a dog, as well as some DNA samples from living clients.
Among these human remains, those of the British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (author of the work “2001: A Space Odyssey” that Stanley Kubrick turned into a film success in 1968) and those of the creator of the saga stand out. Star Trek Eugene Roddenberry. Unlike Celestis, Elysium Space has not made public the contents of its cargo aboard Peregrine.
Due to the load of human remains, during the days prior to the launch of Peregrine, discussion has intensified about the uses to which space should be put.
Thus, for example, the highest representative of the Navajo nation in the United States raised a formal protest to NASA that included the request to cancel the operation. The protest was based on the fact that, for some indigenous American peoples, the shipment of human remains means the desecration of a place, the Moon, considered sacred to their culture (the case was not successful, among other reasons because Peregrine is a private mission, and NASA has no power to decide on it).
The underlying question is once again, for some analysts, to what extent it is necessary to regulate the use of space and, in this case, the content of ships. In this sense, international space laws (approved in 1967) do not contemplate this regulation, although they do explicitly prohibit anyone from claiming ownership or sovereignty over any celestial body.
Likewise, the laws of space do not allow the militarization of celestial bodies, including the Moon, although surprisingly these same laws do not limit the military use of orbits, including Earth’s orbit.
The Peregrine mission has taken off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, aboard a rocket from the ULA company, an aerospace company that, since its first service in 2006, has become one of the main providers of space launches in the world.
For today’s launch, ULA has tested its new Vulcan Centaur rocket, a 61.6 meter high two-phase vehicle that uses, as fuel, natural gas for the first phase and liquid hydrogen for the second (and, in both phases, liquid oxygen as oxidant). This version of the rocket is capable of sending payloads of up to 6,300 kilograms to the Moon.
