Space burial

Celestis space funeral capsule launched on a Taurus 2210 rocket on February 10, 1998

As Space funeral spending is part of the ashes of a cremated dead in the space designated. The actual burial often does not take place in space, since the urns with cheaper offers fall back to earth with their contents or burn up in the atmosphere. Some providers no longer speak of a funeral, but of a memorial (commemoration).

The first known space burial took place from 1997 to 2002 on behalf of the US company Celestis . 24 Mini urns were located during this period at a burned- Pegasus - rocket stage in an Earth orbit .

execution

Because of the high transport costs, only part of the ashes are transported into space after the cremation. The urn then either leaves the earth on an escape path and remains permanently in space, or it is brought into earth orbit and sooner or later burns up like a falling star in the earth's atmosphere, or it is only briefly in space on board a suborbital flight .

The price for “burials” in low earth orbit was given by commercial providers in 2013 at 11,000 euros, for a burial on the moon at 25,000 euros. Since then, prices have roughly halved; transportation to earth orbit is sometimes offered for a few thousand euros.

Chronicle of the space burials

Celebrities whose ashes were carried are listed under the respective flights.

• April 21, 1997: 24 micro-urns in low-earth orbit securely attached to the top stage of a Pegasus XL launcher; Re-entry into the atmosphere on May 21, 2002.
  • Krafft Ehricke (1917–1984), space pioneer
  • Timothy Leary (1920–1996), psychologist, LSD advocate and psychonaut
  • Gerard O'Neill (1927–1992), space pioneer
  • Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991), creator of Star Trek
• January 7, 1998: 1 micro urn on board the lunar probe Lunar Prospector , hits the surface of the moon.
  • Eugene Shoemaker (1928-1997), astronomer
• February 10, 1998: 30 micro-urns in low earth orbit aboard a Taurus launcher.
• December 20, 1999: 36 micro urns in low earth orbit aboard a Taurus launcher.
• September 21, 2001: 43 micro urns into low earth orbit aboard a Taurus launcher (failure).
• January 19, 2006: 1 micro urn on board the New Horizons spacecraft
  • Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997), astronomer
• August 3, 2008: 208 micro urns into low earth orbit aboard a Falcon-1 launcher (failure).
  • Gordon Cooper (1927-2004), astronaut
  • James Doohan (1920–2005), actor (" Spaceship Enterprise ")
• May 22, 2012: Repetition of the failed flight from 2008 with retained replacement quantities of the ashes. This time the capsules were the secondary payload on a Falcon 9 rocket launched by a Dragon spacecraft to the ISS.
• November 4, 2015: Micro urns as sub-payload of the “Supernova-Beta” satellite during the first and only flight of the Super Strypi rocket (failure).
• December 3, 2018: Approx. 100 micro urns into low earth orbit with the Elysium Star 2 satellite on a Falcon 9.

criticism

According to the ethical principles of the International Cremation Federation (ICF): “The ashes of a person are fundamentally indivisible.” This contradicts the practice of only bringing parts of the ashes of a deceased into space.

Web links

• Celestis website
• Last rest as a shooting star: 20 years ago today, the burials in space began in nachrichten.at on April 21, 2017.
• Oliver Neuroth: The first dead were buried in space 20 years ago on SWR3 on April 21, 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} VDI nachrichten January 18, 2013: Low emissions on the last trip . Page 3
2. ↑ Websites of the providers Celestis and Elysium Space, accessed on September 12, 2019.
3. ↑ Last rest as a shooting star: 20 years ago today, the burials in space began in nachrichten.at on April 21, 2017.
4. ^ Space track entry for 1997-018B , accessed September 12, 2019.
5. ^ Spaceflight Now: New Horizons launches on voyage to Pluto and beyond
6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from September 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ Gunter Dirk Krebs: Supernova-Beta (TechSat 1) , accessed on September 12, 2019.