Celestis

This article is about the company. For the city, see Jerusalem.

Celestis, Inc.

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Space burials
Founded	1994
Founders	Charles M. Chafer R. Chan Tysor
Headquarters	Houston, Texas, United States
Parent	Space Services Inc.

Celestis, Inc. is a company that launches cremated human remains into space, a procedure known as a space burial. It is a subsidiary of the private space company Space Services Inc. The company purchases launches as a secondary payload on various rockets, and launches samples of a person's cremated remains. Launching an individual's entire cremated remains (which weigh between four and eight pounds) would be prohibitively expensive for most people, so Celestis launches 1 gram or 7 gram samples of cremated remains so as to provide an affordable service.

Celestis has flown a number of notable participants over the years. Its first flight -- The Founders Flight—carried cremated remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960s icon Timothy Leary into Earth orbit. Also on board were remains of physicist and space visionary Gerard K. O'Neill, noted rocket scientist Krafft A. Ehricke, and 20 others. Dr. Eugene Shoemaker—a famous planetary geologist and co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 -- was launched to the moon on NASA's Lunar Prospector mission in 1998: Celestis helped friends of Dr. Shoemaker include a sample of his cremated remains on that mission. Mercury 7 astronaut L. Gordon Cooper, Star Trek actor James Doohan ("Mr. Scott"), and a host of others from various walks of life were launched on board The Legacy Flight in 2007. Titanic explorer Ralph White was on board the Discovery and Pioneer flights.

Family members and friends of flight participants usually can attend the launch. Celestis usually arranges for a tour of the launch facility and hosts a non-sectarian memorial service prior to the launch. Celestis also helps people prearrange their own memorial spaceflights for the future.

Missions

Launch date/time (GMT)	Rocket	Flight name	Orbit	Notable individuals	Remarks
21 April 1997, 11:59	Pegasus-XL	Founders	Earth orbit	Beauford Franklin, Rocket Scientist Gene Roddenberry, writer Gerard O'Neill, physicist Krafft Ehricke, rocket scientist Timothy Leary, psychologist, writer	Reached Earth orbit; Reentered atmosphere May 20, 2002
7 January 1998, 02:29	Athena	Luna-01	Lunar	Eugene Merle Shoemaker, astronomer	Attached to Lunar Prospector Landed 31 July 1999
10 February 1998, 13:20	Taurus	Ad Astra	Earth orbit		Reached Earth orbit; Still on orbit
21 December 1999, 07:13	Taurus	Millennial	Earth orbit	Charles Oren Bennett, illustrator	Reached Earth orbit; Still on orbit
21 September 2001, 18:49	Taurus	Odyssey	Earth orbit		Failed to reach orbit
28 April 2007, 14:56	SpaceLoft XL	Legacy	Earthrise (suborbital)	Gordon Cooper, astronaut James Doohan, Star Trek actor	Reached space and returned to Earth, as planned
3 August 2008, 03:34	Falcon 1	Explorers	Earth orbit	Gordon Cooper, astronaut James Doohan, Star Trek actor	Failed to reach orbit
2 May 2009, 14:00	SpaceLoft XL	Discovery	Earthrise (suborbital)	Ralph White, explorer	Failed to reach space
4 May 2010, 12:41	SpaceLoft XL	Pioneer	Earthrise (suborbital)	Ralph White, explorer	Reached space and returned to Earth, as planned
20 May 2011, 13:21	SpaceLoft XL	Goddard	Earthrise (suborbital)		Reached space and returned to Earth, as planned
22 May 2012, 07:44	Falcon 9	New Frontier	Earth orbit	Gordon Cooper, astronaut James Doohan, Star Trek actor	Reached orbit, on a canister attached to the Falcon 9 launch vehicle's second stage. As such, it is on a rapidly decaying orbital trajectory that will burn up in the Earth's atmosphere in about a year's time. It carried the ashes of 308 people, 1-gram per person.
21 June 2013, 11:57	SpaceLoft XL	Centennial	Earthrise (suborbital)	Candy Johnson, entertainer	Reached space and returned to Earth, as planned
23 October 2014, 13:33	SpaceLoft XL	Conestoga	Earthrise (suborbital)	CJ Twomey	Reached space and returned to Earth, as planned

Future flights

In 2014 a memorial service for the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Star Trek's "Nurse Chapel," the voice of the computer on board the fictional starship Enterprise, and Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, will fly with her late husband Gene Roddenberry together, "on an infinite journey into deep space aboard their Voyager Memorial Spaceflight Service...will carry their spirits, their memories, and the message of their life’s work into the cosmos." -Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry II.

External links

• Official website