A CNN report from July 1997 notes the rather humorous legal charge filed by Adam Ismail, Mustafa Khalil, and Abdullah al-Umari, who stated: “Sojourner and Pathfinder, which are owned by the United States government, landed on Mars and began exploring it without informing us or seeking our approval.”
Mars in natural color in 2007. Author: ESA CC BY-SA 3.0They demanded that the current exploration of Mars is stopped and any further Mars research should go through them. The men also explained that they were only seeking their right now because of the anniversary of several of their ancient cities’ foundations, and the desire to raise money to refurbish them.
Apparently, this is not the only case of extraterrestrial estate claims: There was a guy (Sylvio Langevin) who declared he owns all of the planets in the solar system. And another guy who tried to own the moon; Dennis Hope, claimed ownership of the moon back in the 1980s and, according to him, he has sold over 2 million acres of land on the moon at $20 per acre. There was also the “Nation of Celestial Space” which claimed to own everything in space, and Gregory Nemitz who laid claim to an asteroid.
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