Instead of caskets or urns, ashes of the dearly departed will be sealed in capsules built into lunar landing modules, which will serve as communal crypts on the moon's surface.

Celestis Inc. will charge about 10,000 dollars (US) to send a single gram of human remains to the moon and plans a deal for couples -- 14 grams of ashes from two people for approximately 30,000 dollars.

Celestis confirmed on Friday that it has deals with private firms Odyssey Moon Limited and Astrobotic Technology Inc. to send cremated human remains to the lunar surface via private rocket flights by the end of 2009.

Luna Service missions will be a "special honor available to all who share the vision of extending humanity's reach to the stars," the company said in a written release.

Celestis has specialized in "memorial spaceflight" for more than a decade.

Celestis provided NASA a capsule in 1998 to send remains of Eugene Shoemaker on a spacecraft that orbited the moon for a year before crashing at its south pole.

Shoemaker became the first person to be laid to rest someplace other than Earth. Celestis has sent small portions of people's cremated remains into orbit around the Earth in six memorial spaceflights.

Those whose ashes have been carried into space include Gene Roddenberry, who created the successful Star Trek science fiction television series in 1966.

Cremated remains of actor James Doohan, who played "Scotty" in Star Trek programs and films, were launched into orbit last year.

The next Celestis mission is to send human ashes into Earth's orbit aboard a Falcon 1 rocket in June.

US-based Astrobotic and Odyssey Moon, which has its headquarters in the Isle of Man, are among ten teams vying for Google's 30-million-dollar Lunar X Prize.

Google announced the prize in September, challenging entrepreneurs to "re-conquer the moon" and launch a "Moon 2.0" era of private lunar visits and enterprises.

"We welcome the opportunity to support Celestis and continue their uniquely compelling service to the Moon," said Odyssey Moon chief executive Robert Richards.

The Google X Prize promises 20 million dollars to the first team to land a privately-funded craft on the moon, move it at least 500 meters and send "Mooncast" video back to Earth.

Millions more dollars in "bonus prizes" can we won by completing additional tasks on the moon.

The 30 million dollars in prize money drops to 25 million dollars in 2012. All the prize money is taken from the table in 2014 if unclaimed.

"People have not really thought through the potential the moon represents," Odyssey Moon chairman Ramin Khadem, a founder of Inmarsat, told AFP after the team's public debut last year at a Space Investment Summit in California.

"The moon is the eighth continent and we need to exploit it in a responsible way. We want to win the Google prize and, if we do, that will be gravy. But either way we are going to the moon."

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