James Doohan - Death

Death

On July 20, 2005, at 5:30 in the morning, Doohan died at his home in Redmond, Washington, with his wife Wende and long-time friend and agent, Steve Stevens, at his side. His agent identified the cause as pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease. Coincidentally, Doohan died on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, arguably the greatest engineering achievement in human history.

Almost two years after his death, approximately one-quarter ounce (7 grams) of Doohan's ashes were sent into space, as he had requested in his will. The ashes, along with those of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper as well as almost two hundred others, were launched on the SpaceLoft XL rocket, on April 28, 2007, when the rocket briefly entered outer space in a four-minute suborbital flight before parachuting to earth, as planned, with the ashes still inside. The ashes were subsequently launched on a Falcon 1 rocket, on August 3, 2008, into what was intended to be a low Earth orbit, however the rocket failed two minutes after launch. The rest of his ashes were scattered over Puget Sound in Washington. On May 22, 2012, a small urn containing some of Doohan's remains in ash form was flown into space aboard the Dragon spacecraft as part of COTS Demo Flight 2.