Space Burial - History

History

The concept of launching 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. It was later proposed as a commercial service by Richard DeGroot in a Seattle Times newspaper article on April 3, 1977. Since 1997, the private company Celestis has conducted numerous space burials, usually as part of a third-party space mission.

The first space burial, Celestis' Earthview 01: The Founders Flight, was launched on April 21, 1997. An aircraft carried a modified Pegasus rocket containing samples of the remains of 24 people to an altitude of 11 km (38,000 ft) above the Canary Islands. The rocket then carried the remains into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 578 km (359 mi) and a perigee of 551 km (342 mi), orbiting the Earth once every 96 minutes until reentry on May 20, 2002, northeast of Australia. Famous people buried on this flight included Gene Roddenberry and Timothy Leary.

The second known space burial was the burial of a sample of the remains of Dr. Eugene Shoemaker on the Moon by the Lunar Prospector probe, which was launched on January 7, 1999 by a three-stage Athena rocket. The probe, containing scientific instruments and the ashes of Dr. Shoemaker, impacted the Moon near the lunar south pole at 4:52 a.m. Central Daylight Time on July 31, 1999.

Although Celestis does not currently offer space burial for animal remains, a Monroe, Washington police dog may have been on a 2012 burial flight, a contractual violation.