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A call for Indigenous partnership in the return to the Moon

Nature Astronomy volume 8, pages 400–402 (2024)Cite this article

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In response to concerns raised by the Navajo Nation on treating the Moon as a grave, NASA has a unique opportunity to advance the conversation with Indigenous communities regarding how we interact with space environments, and who gets to decide.

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Fig. 1: The Moon atop brewing storms above the Earth.

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References

  1. Harvey, A. D. Nature 625, 425–425 (2024).

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  2. Venkatesan, A., Lowenthal, J., Prem, P. & Vidaurri, M. Nat. Astron. 4, 1043–1048 (2020).

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  3. Gardner-Vandy, K. et al. Relationships First and Always: A Guide to Collaborations with Indigenous Communities White Paper No. 471 (Bulletin of the AAS, 2021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English and Comparative Literature, , Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Frank Tavares

  2. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, , Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Monica Vidaurri & Hunter Olson

  3. Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Adeene Denton

  4. Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ, USA

    J. A. Grier

  5. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Alvin Harvey

  6. Other Orb LLC, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Moses Milazzo

  7. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA

    Parvathy Prem

  8. Paragon TEC/NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Daniella Scalice

  9. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Aparna Venkatesan

Authors
  1. Frank Tavares
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  2. Monica Vidaurri
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  3. Adeene Denton
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  4. J. A. Grier
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  5. Alvin Harvey
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  6. Moses Milazzo
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  7. Hunter Olson
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  8. Parvathy Prem
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  9. Daniella Scalice
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  10. Aparna Venkatesan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Monica Vidaurri.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Tavares, F., Vidaurri, M., Denton, A. et al. A call for Indigenous partnership in the return to the Moon. Nat Astron 8, 400–402 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02251-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02251-6

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