Fancy a chunk of the moon?

Lunar Embassy, a real estate company established in 1980, and which claims to be the founder and leader of the extraterrestrial real estate market, bring to Earthlings the opportunity to invest in real estate on the moon, Mars, Venus and Io (one of Jupiter`s moons).

And no, this is not a joke - these people really do sell what they describe as the ultimate novel gift - extraterrestrial land.

Perhaps the best thing for you to do when visiting this site is to grab firm hold of your sense of humour, completely skirt the legalities of selling property that may or may not already belong to someone, and go along for what can be a pretty fun ride.

So, smirks and giggles aside, this is what you can get for a few dollars.

When you purchase land on any of the planets, you receive a formal document of ownership, a site map which shows you where on the planet your property is located and a constitution and bill of rights for each individual planet.

There is also the option of purchasing extraterrestrial passports and nationality - for those landowners who are optimistic enough about the future of space exploration to believe that they too may someday walk a land of different gravity.

In addition, one may buy accessories in the line of clothing, mouse pads, coffee mugs, bumper stickers and even an alien test kit, which promises to help you determine whether suspicious-looking humans are in fact, of alien origin.

You`d probably be excused for thinking the site is a massive joke. However, the sale of extraterrestrial property has been ongoing for 19 years - and Lunar Embassy is a member of Netcheck, an Internet consumer watchdog organisation. It is also a member of the Netcheck Internet Commerce Bureau, where you can consult its company register.

And, contrary to popular belief, ownership by individuals of extraterrestrial properties is not forbidden. The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty stipulates that no government can own extraterrestrial property, but this doesn`t rule out individuals or corporations.

Therefore, one can become the legal owner of an extraterrestrial body, if you are the first one that claimed it. It`s this line of reasoning that prompts the site owners to claim that since the Americans were the first to land on the moon, it could be argued that if the moon ever belonged to anyone, it certainly belongs more to the US than any other nation.

The site is fairly straightforward to navigate, as each link opens up in a new browser window - although it can be very slow to load, as most of the pages are graphics heavy.