It now ends with most of us getting turned into dust and obituaries posted online. Some new burial practices and places include:

1. Orbit in outer space. SpaceX recently launched the cremated remains of 152 people on its Falcon Heavy rocket. A company called Celestis facilitated these “funeral flights,” charging over $5,000 for 1 gram of “participant” ashes.
2. Transformation into a diamond. Engineers can turn the carbon from human ashes into diamonds that are physically and chemically identical to natural diamonds.
3. Green burial. Touted as an environmental and financially friendly option, green burials can be as simple as wrapping a body in a cotton shroud and lowering it to the ground — factoring out conventional vaults, coffins and embalming.
4. Green cremation. Instead of using flame, green cremation uses heated water and an alkali solution to accelerate the natural decomposition of the body.
5. Celebration of life ceremony. In lieu of a somber funeral, an end-of-life ceremony celebrates a person’s life and legacy, often with a dedicated event planner, a speaker and activity lineups.
6. Digital tombstones: One Slovenian cemetery is experimenting with digital tombstones that can show pictures and video, and potentially link to a smartphone application for interactivity.
7. Smart library. One Tokyo crematorium allows you to summon ashes with the swipe of a card: A machine transports the ashes from an underground vault through a conveyor belt to the right room.
8. Pet burial. “Togetherness Resting Places” reunite humans and pets “when the time comes.”
9. Memorial reef. Florida-based company Eternal Reefs mixes ashes with “reef ball” material, creating memorial reefs that can serve as habitats for sea life.
10. Living wake. Some people are attending their own funerals ahead of death — by holding a “living wake,” offering family and friends a chance to say goodbye.
11. Live-streamed funerals. An estimated 20% of funeral homes offer livestreaming, allowing those who can’t make it to a funeral to share the experience — and those who’ve attended to look back on it.
12. Disney World. About once a month, Disney employees clean up scattered remains ($) in the park, where visitors sneak in ashes to disperse at Cinderella’s castle, on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and throughout the Haunted Mansion.

Go deeper:

• More Americans want to be cremated
• Q&A with the filmmakers of "Alternate Endings"
• How death cafes are de-stigmatizing death
• How the health care system fails dying patients
• How tech platforms handle a user's death

Between the lines: Step into a death cafe and the first thing you’ll notice is that it doesn’t necessarily look like a group of people conversing about the end of life.

• There's cake. There's tea. There's laughter.
• That’s part of the approach, says Sarah Farr, founder of Death Positive DC and a death cafe organizer. “Life is funny. And sometimes using humor can lighten the conversation a bit.”

Anyone can host a death cafe at a local coffee shop, library or public space. Anyone can show up. Anyone can contribute, or just listen.

• Nearly 9000 death cafes have been held across the world, and an updated interactive map helps conversation-seekers find upcoming death cafes.
• Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz organized the first “café mortel” in 2004, but the “death cafe” was popularized by Londoner Jon Underwood in 2011, who called himself a “death entrepreneur” and was inspired by the Buddhist concept of impermanence.

At death cafes, topics can range from logistical to mystical: from writing your will to what happens to the soul after death.

• “Coco comes up a lot. It's a Disney kids movie. But it's such a beautiful movie about death and staying connected to our dead loved ones,” says Farr.

“For many of us, there is sort of silence around the topic of death. We aren't really educated on how to talk about death.”

Death cafes aren’t just for those who are aging or have terminal illnesses.

• High school students who have lost a parent, a sibling or a friend; ICU nurses burnt out from seeing how death is treated in hospitals; government desk workers — these are all people who have participated in death cafes run by Nicole Heidbreder, a D.C.-based hospice nurse.

Today, death cafe organizers like Farr and Heidbreder are seeing more momentum around talking about death.

• “In America, we live in a very youth driven culture. There are definitely some aspects of our culture that deny death,” Farr says.
• But greater attention in the news and social media, along with grassroots work like death cafes, increased awareness from mass shootings and the rise of doctors who have become household names — like Atul Gawande and BJ Miller — is changing how Americans talk about death.

The bottom line: “One of the most fundamental things about death cafes is that in all these conversations, what we're really getting at is looking at our own lives,” says Farr. “How do we want to live? What are we going to do with the time that we have?"

Go deeper:

• Special report: The new art of dying
• More Americans want to be cremated
• Q&A with the filmmakers of "Alternate Endings"

The backdrop: In 1960, NASA director of space flight development Abe Silverstein proposed the name "Apollo" for the first crewed U.S. mission to the Moon after reading through a mythology book. An image of Apollo riding his chariot across the sun inspired him, because it matched the ambition of the program.

But "an ancient Greek would have thought twice before daring to name a lunar mission after the goddess' (Artemis') younger brother," says Keyne Cheshire, a classics professor at Davidson College.

• Apollo was a Sun god, whereas Artemis was a Moon goddess. So "Apollo" made less mythological sense as a name for Moon expeditions.
• "I can't imagine that anything but sexism was the reason for Apollo's getting the credit for so long," Cheshire tells Axios.

By contrast, the Soviet Union sent the first man, first woman, first Asian man and first black man into orbit with their "Luna" program, although the U.S. ultimately sent the first man to the Moon.

• "Luna" is the Latin name for the Roman Moon goddess Diana.
• "What was it about American scientific — or broader — culture that led NASA to resist naming its lunar expeditions for the Moon goddess?" Cheshire asks.

Today, NASA is becoming more and more diverse, with 5 women in its most recent class of 12 astronaut candidates.

• Meanwhile, Russia's cosmonauts are overwhelmingly overwhelmingly male.

What's next: After Artemis, Cheshire would recommend "Callisto" — who was "originally a young comrade" of Artemis — as the name for a future Moon mission.

• Callisto is the name of one of the moons of Jupiter.
• "Wouldn't it be nice of NASA to put Callisto in some way back in Artemis' camp by naming a Moon mission for her?"

Go deeper:

• Special report: Factory Moon
• Poll: The Moon is a young person's game
• We don't know how much water is on the Moon