The first private lunar space mission to win approval from U.S. officials is slated to carry human remains and DNA samples alongside its scientific equipment. And there’s good news of anyone interested in joining the historic voyage next year: There’s plenty of space.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that Moon Express, a firm co-founded by billionaire Naveen Jain, was approved to launch a suitcase-sized rover to the moon. Another company, Celestis, has reserved room for ashes and inert DNA samples.

Though it may sound bizarre, space burials aren't new. Celestis has more than a dozen times shipped ashes into space and helped with the first and thus far only lunar burial, of planetary scientist Eugene Merle Shoemaker in 1999 aboard the Lunar Prospector.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is believed to be the first person to have his ashes taken to space, by an astronaut in 1992. In 1997, Celestis launched more of Roddenberry’s remains, along with those of LSD evangelizing psychologist Timothy Leary and others.

The Moon Express launch will be the space burial company’s first to feature DNA samples of potentially living people, which a lab will convert into an inert white powder. This is being done to accommodate people who do not choose cremation and also “people who are alive who would like to choose off-planet storage of their DNA or who want to make a statement about reaching the lunar surface,” says Celestis CEO Charles Chafer, a longtime space enthusiast who founded the company in 1994.

Chafer says about 25 people have purchased a one-way trip aboard the Moon Express, and that as many as 250 probably could be accommodated, depending on specific spacecraft requirements. The samples, encased in heavy-duty aluminum capsules that either look like a chap stick case or a watch battery, will be used as ballast to balance the craft – and it’s his understanding that once they reach the moon they will remain attached to the rover in perpetuity.

The cost of a lunar burial – $12,500 – is only slightly more than the cost of an average American funeral, though in truth it’s only a partial burial using a one-gram sample, meaning families will have earthly remains left over.

Chafer says each of the company’s space launches have been profitable, though he expects spots will remain available into next year.

People who do purchase the burial plan will join a select club. Most human remains launched into space already have burned upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, though in addition to Shoemaker’s sample that crashed into a lunar crater there are similarly boundary-breaking ashes belonging to scientist Clyde Tombaugh that recently passed Pluto, which he discovered in 1930, aboard the New Horizons spacecraft.

“We’ve put over 1,200 folks into space, which I’d like to say is more than all the governments combined,” Coffer says. He says a few dozen still are in orbit.

FAA spokesman Hank Price directed specific questions about cremated ashes aboard the upcoming launch to Moon Express, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But Price says the practice is not controversial from the FAA's regulatory perspective.

Small aluminum capsules will carry human ashes and DNA samples into space. Courtesy of Celestis

“FAA has issued launch licenses to transport these types of payloads in the past, such as the Pegasus launches conducted by Orbital ATK,” he says. A Pegasus rocket carried the first Celestis shipment into orbit.

“The FAA does not have any regulations specific to the release of those remains,” Price says.

Frans von der Dunk, a space law expert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's law school, says that "basically the treaties ruling outer space have never foreseen such specific use, so that it boils down to interpretations of very general principles."

Von der Dunk says he believes "one can really question whether this constitutes a use of the scarce resource of outer space for the benefit of all mankind," but that at the same time it would be difficult for anyone to veto a space power's decision to allow it.

If a country allows space burials and another objects, he says, "there is fairly little they can do in a legal context, as long as no harmful interference with other legitimate space activities occurs, liability is taken care of and indeed the activity has also been properly licensed" while not running afoul of less-relevant restrictions.

But Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, editor-in-chief emeritus of the Journal of Space Law, says local laws still could present a problem.

"In the U.S. the law of burial is traditionally local and state law and not a question of federal jurisdiction," she says.

Indeed, in the 1980s an early plan to launch cremated remains into space was challenged by Florida authorities, who claimed the Celestis Group was operating as an unlicensed cemetery and needed to own 15 acres of contiguous land in space as well as a paved road there before it could launch ashes.

Chafer says by the time the legal fight was over, two of the three Celestis Group co-founders had died. His company took the group's name in exchange for launching their ashes into space. He says the company has launched ashes without issue from Spain's Canary Islands, California, Florida, New Mexico and South Pacific. Moon Express is expected to take off in New Zealand, or possibly Cape Canaveral.

Chafer says his company alone has been successful in operating commercial space burials, though at least two other companies – Elysium Space and Orbital Memorials – offer the service.

The businessman says the government approves the action if aboard one of their craft and that the FAA approves private missions, looking at their intersection with international treaties, national defense and the problem of space junk.

Brendan Curry, vice president at the Space Foundation, says he believes space burials are not subject to specific federal regulation because “the people who have looked at it have probably said it’s a very benign activity, sending a small portion of someone’s ashes to a lifeless airless environment."

When sending material to the moon, “you don’t have to worry about a contamination issue or something like that,” he says. “The moon is a pretty harsh environment. There’s no atmosphere there and it gets pummeled by some pretty harsh radiation.”

Though an unconventional choice, Curry says he understands why some people would send their remains or DNA into space.