Each Top-Level-Domain (TLD) has its own standards. Most just need your credit card transaction to be accepted. Government, municipal and academic TLD usually need you to be one of them to register a domain for you. Some country TLD require your site to have language or culture related but not always.
Every few months there is a similar such story about this ancient marvel of technology and the people remotely maintaining it against all odds.
I can imagine a headline 100 years from now:
“Engineers are modifying Voyager 1 decorative panel bolt into a functional interstellar communicator”