Acre of the Moon

Already, you've asked yourself just how it's possible to buy an acre of the Moon. And right now, you're probably trying to ascertain who on Earth (pun intended) owns the rights to the moon. Aldrin and Armstrong? The Clangers? That black oblong thing from 2001: A Space Odyssey? Actually, it's none of the above. An agent called MoonEstates instead has asserted their 'right' to sell the surface of the Moon a bit at a time.

What it and an organisation known as the Lunar Embassy have done is to look very carefully at the The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Treaty of 1984, propositions put forward by the United Nations. Implemented to stop governments from claiming celestial bodies and planets for themselves (had the people involved not seen a sci-fi movie?), it didn't say that other companies and groups couldn't do the very same. Cheeky, perhaps; opportunist, definitely.

Thus, it is now possible to claim an acre of the Moon in your own name (or someone else's, as one makes a great gift). If anyone wants to build on your little plot, then they will require your permission. Anyone can explore without permission, but that's as far as it goes. This clever idea is catching on like wildfire, and MoonEstates ensure that all plots are unique. In fact, they've done everything to reassure buyers and make the process as fair and correct as possible.

An Englishman's home, it now seems, could very well be a dusty plot of land on the largest, gravitationally weak satellite of the Earth.

If you have any other questions check out this FAQ.

Some Lunar facts:

• The Moon is a 4.6 billion year old ball of rock that circles around Earth once every 27 days, 7 hours and 43 minutes.
• The moon's diameter is about 2,160 miles (3,476 km), somewhat more than 1/4 the earth's diameter. The moon has about 1/81 the mass of the earth and is 3/5 as dense.
• On the Moon's surface the force of gravitation is about 1/6 that on earth.
• The surface temperature rises above 100°C (212°F) at lunar noon and sinks below -155°C (-247°F) at night.
• The surface of the Moon is rocky and covered with craters. Mountains and hills surround the edges of large, flat plains. The lunar mountain ranges, with heights up to 25,000 ft (7,800 m), are comparable to the highest mountains on earth but in general are not very steep.
• The Moon moves in a counterclockwise direction with an average orbital speed of about 0.6 miles/sec or 2,160 m.p.h. Because the lunar orbit is elliptical, the distance between the Earth and the Moon varies between about 227,000 miles (365,000 km) at perigee, and about 254,000 miles (409,000 km) at apogee, when the Moon is farthest from the Earth. The average distance is about 240,000 miles (385,000 km), or about 60 times the radius of the Earth itself.
• The plane of the Moon's orbit is tilted, or inclined, at an angle of about 5° with respect to the ecliptic.
• There is no air on the Moon, but it has recently been announced that water is definitely present - according to NASA between 10 and 300 million tons of water-ice is scattered inside the craters of the lunar poles.
• There are dark areas on the Moon. These are really dry land but long ago astronomers thought they were filled with water, so they called them seas.
• In 1969, the first astronauts landed on the Moon. This trip was followed by five more missions, the last in 1972.