Space burial is the launching of human remains into space. Missions may go into orbit around the Earth or to extraterrestrial bodies such as the Moon, or farther into space.
Remains are sealed until the spacecraft burns up upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere or they reach their extraterrestrial destinations. Suborbital flights briefly transport them into space then return to Earth where they can be recovered. Small samples of remains are usually launched to minimize the cost of launching mass into space, thereby making such services more affordable.
History and typology
The concept of launching human remains into space using conventional rockets was proposed by the science fiction author Neil R. Jones in the novella "The Jameson Satellite", which was published in the pulp magazine
Amazing Stories in 1931.
["The Jameson Satellite" ( Amazing Stories, July 1931; Amazing Stories, April 1956 (reprint); Ace Books collection #1, 1967.] It was later proposed as a commercial service in the 1965 movie,
The Loved One,
[goodgoodbye.com/film-and-video-reviews/funeral-films-the-loved-one/] and by Richard DeGroot in a
Seattle Times newspaper article on April 3, 1977.
[John Hinterberger: The Seattle Times Sunday Magazine, page 3, April 3, 1977.] Since 1997, the private company
Celestis has conducted numerous space burials flying as secondary payloads.
Maiden flights
The first space burial occurred in 1992 when the NASA (mission STS-52) carried a sample of
Gene Roddenberry's cremated remains into space and returned them to Earth.
The first private space burial, Celestis' Earthview 01: The Founders Flight, was launched on April 21, 1997. An aircraft departing from the Canary Islands carried a Pegasus rocket containing samples of the remains of 24 people to an altitude of above the Atlantic Ocean. The rocket then carried the remains into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of and a perigee of , orbiting the Earth once every 96 minutes until re-entry on May 20, 2002, northeast of Australia. Famous people on this flight included Roddenberry and Timothy Leary.
Suborbital flights
Short flights that cross the boundary of space without attempting to reach orbital velocity are a cost-effective method of space burial. The remains do not burn up and are either recovered or lost.
Moon burial
The first Moon burial was that of Eugene Merle Shoemaker, a portion of whose
cremated remains were flown to the Moon by NASA.
Shoemaker's former colleague
Carolyn Porco, a University of Arizona professor, proposed and produced the tribute of having Shoemaker's ashes launched aboard the NASA's
Lunar Prospector spacecraft.
Ten days after Shoemaker's passing, Porco had the go-ahead from NASA administrators and delivered the ashes to the
Lunar Prospector Mission Director Scott Hubbard at the NASA Ames Research Center.
The ashes were accompanied by a piece of brass foil inscribed with an image of Comet Hale–Bopp, an image of a
Meteor Crater in northern Arizona, and a passage from William Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet.
The
Lunar Prospector spacecraft was launched on January 6, 1998, and impacted the south polar region of the Moon on July 31, 1999.
Missions to the Moon are proposed by both Elysium Space
Pet burial
In 2014, Celestis launched Celestis Pets, a pet memorial spaceflight service for animal cremated remains.
Prior to then, Bismarck, a Monroe, Washington
police dog may have flown on a 2012 memorial spaceflight. When this news broke, Celestis' president said that if dog ashes were on the rocket, the person who supplied the cremated remains likely violated the contract they signed with Celestis.
Dedicated spacecraft
On May 17, 2017, Elysium Space announced the world's first memorial flight involving a dedicated spacecraft. The
CubeSat was placed as a secondary payload on a
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of a dedicated rideshare mission called SSO-A planned by Spaceflight. The launch took place from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on December 3, 2018.
The launch was successful, however, industry sources have noted that the Elysium Star spacecraft remained attached to the deployer due to a failure to procure proper licensing.
Space burial businesses
Space burial businesses generally refer to their service offering as "Memorial Spaceflight".
|
|
| Celestis | 1994 | Active | Launch to space and return to Earth, into Earth orbit, to lunar surface, into deep space |
| Elysium Space | 2013 | Inactive | Launch into Earth orbit, to lunar surface |
| Space NTK | 2017 | Active | Launch into Earth orbit, to lunar surface |
|
Spaceflight history
Orbital
|
|
| 2020~ |
| December 21, 2024 | Space NTK | Falcon 9 | Geocentric orbit | Remains samples | Success |
| May 15, 2022 | Celestis | Falcon 9 | Geocentric orbit | Remains samples | Success |
| April 1, 2022 | Space NTK | Falcon 9 | Geocentric orbit | Remains samples | Success |
| 2010-2019 |
2018 | Elysium Space | Falcon 9 | Geocentric orbit | Remains samples | Planned |
| November 3, 2015 | Elysium Space | SPARK | Geocentric orbit | Remains samples | Failure |
| December 5, 2014 | NASA | Delta IV Heavy | Geocentric orbit | Remains sample of NASA Orion engineer | Success |
| May 22, 2012 | Celestis | Falcon 9 | Geocentric orbit | Over 300 remains samples | Success |
| 2000-2009 |
| August 2, 2008 | Celestis | Falcon 1 | Geocentric orbit | Over 200 remains samples | Failure |
| September 21, 2001 | Celestis | Taurus rocket | Geocentric orbit | 43 remains samples | Failure |
| 1990-1999 |
| December 20, 1999 | Celestis | Taurus rocket | Geocentric orbit | 36 remains samples | Success |
| February 10, 1998 | Celestis | Taurus rocket | Geocentric orbit | 30 remains samples | Success |
| April 21, 1997 | Celestis | Pegasus rocket | Geocentric orbit | 24 remains samples | Success |
| October 22, 1992 | NASA | Space Shuttle Columbia | Geocentric orbit | Remains sample of Gene Roddenberry | Success |
|
Moon
Deep space
Suborbital
Notable individuals buried in space
Launched into Earth orbit
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Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991), creator of Star Trek.
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Gerard K. O'Neill (1927–1992), space physicist.
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Krafft Ehricke (1917–1984), rocket scientist.
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Timothy Leary (1920–1996), American writer, psychologist, psychedelic drug advocate and Harvard University professor.
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James Doohan (1920– 2005), actor best known for his portrayal of Montgomery Scott in the television and film series Star Trek.
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Gordon Cooper (1927–2004), American astronaut. He was one of the original Mercury Seven pilots in the Project Mercury program, the first crewed space effort by the United States.
Launched into outer space
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Nichelle Nichols (1932–2022), American actress best known for her role as Nyota Uhura in the original was launched on the maiden flight of the Vulcan Centaur.
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Eugene Merle Shoemaker (1928–1997), astronomer and co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9.
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Clyde Tombaugh (1906–1997), American astronomer and discoverer of Pluto in 1930. A small sample of Tombaugh's ashes are aboard New Horizons, the first spacecraft to pass by and photograph Pluto. This is the first sample of human cremated remains which will escape the Solar System.
Planned space burials
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Leiji Matsumoto (1938–2023), Japanese creator of numerous anime and manga series including Galaxy Express 999, Space Battleship Yamato and Space Pirate Captain Harlock, announced his intention to have a symbolic portion of his cremated remains to be launched into space on a future Elysium Space mission.
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Majel Barrett (1932–2008), American actress who played Christine Chapel in the original series; wife of Gene Roddenberry. A symbolic portion of both her cremated remains and Roddenberry's cremated remains will be launched into space on a future Celestis mission.
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William R. Pogue (1930–2014), American astronaut.
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Luise Clayborn Kaish (1925–2013), American sculptor and painter.
Ethics
External links
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target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The Real Elysium – Send Your Loved One Into Space for $2k, PandoDaily, 2013
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Have A Space Burial As Elysium Sends Your Ashes Into Orbit, TechCrunch, 2013
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Ash Scattering: Non-Traditional Ways To Be Memorialized, Huffington Post, 2012
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The Ultimate One-Way Ticket, Wired Magazine, 2006
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Death Is a Long, Strange Trip, Wired Magazine, 2006
