(Photo: Moon Shop)

Dennis M. Hope is in real estate, but not of the earthly sort. He's actually been selling properties on the moon, Mars and other planets since 1980 from his office in Gardnerville, Nevada.

This weekend, The New York Times ran a short documentary about Mr. Hope and his lunar real estate business, which is of questionable legal standing. Mr. Hope believes that he owns the moon due to a legal loophole in Article Two of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

That article says that "no nation by appropriation shall have sovereignty or control over any of the satellite bodies." Mr. Hope believes that because the treaty doesn't say a person can't own the moon, he's perfectly entitled to filing for ownership for it.

"Nowhere in the outer space treaty does it mention anything about individuals," Mr. Hope told The New York Times. "This is the loophole that gave me the impetus to file a claim of ownership over the moon."

Mr. Hope then sent a note to the U.N. saying that it should contact him if it has a legal problem with his claim to the moon. Since it never did, Mr. Hope has been operating his lunar real estate business based on the notion that yep, he's king of the moon. He says he's sold over 600 million acres on the moon so far, with about 200 properties sold a day.

It's only $19.99 (plus a "lunar tax" of $1.51 plus $10 for shipping and handling), which is actually kind of a deal, even if it is a scam--just think of the novelty. You even get an official lunar deed. Too bad Valentine's Day is over.

The documentary is part of a press ramp up for the EPIX film Lunarcy!, which premieres April 3rd.

Cozy! (Photo: Foster + Partner)

From the continent that brought you IKEA comes the latest in lunar home fabrication. In the hopes of eventually landing some folks on Earth's satellite, the European Space Agency has organized a consortium tasking with figuring out how to 3D print habitations on the moon's surface using lunar soil. One of the members, London-based architectural firm Foster + Partners, announced yesterday they've drawn up a design for a four-person base.

It looks eerily like the dugout where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family lived in On the Banks of Plum Creek. But hey, it's not like the studio apartment you're living in now is so spacious.

According to Xavier De Kestelier, a partner in Foster + Partners' specialist modeling group and ideal candidate for lunar emperor based on his name alone:

“As a practice, we are used to designing for extreme climates on earth and exploiting the environmental benefits of using local, sustainable materials – our lunar habitation follows a similar logic."

He added: "Join us in our new home on the Moon, a chance to build a new society that I rule like the God I was born to be." (Okay, he didn't really add that.)

(h/t de zeen)

Astronaut. (Photo: flickr.com/edwin11)

The heavens are a bit better decorated today, thanks to the art-loving rocket scientists at NASA. Space.com reports that the agency has used lasers to successfully transmit the Mona Lisa (in digital form) to a satellite orbiting the moon.

The site says: 

The laser signal, fired from an installation in Maryland, beamed the Mona Lisa to the moon to be received 240,000 miles (384,400 km) away by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the moon since 2009.

"This is the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances," added researcher David Smith in a statement. The idea is to turn the tech into an alternative to radio as a way for interplanetary spacecraft to communicate. That way if Elon Musk ever does decamp to Mars, we could cut down on the time it takes to receive his no-doubt-delightful communiqués from the Red Planet.

Pretty cool! We can't help but wonder, though: Why hurl a painting even humans don't quite "get" into outer space? Pretty sure aliens are just going to assume she's secretly laughing at them.