Space memorial service Celestis has contracted with aerospace company United Launch Alliance to send a special payload on ULA's first Vulcan Centaur mission. The unmanned mission will deliver a Peregrine lander to the moon. As a secondary payload, it will also be carrying 150 vials of cremated remains of people who wished to travel through outer space. Several of those will be cast members of the original Star Trek TV series. This part of the mission has been dubbed the Enterprise Memorial Mission.
The vials of cremains belong to Nichelle Nichols, who not only played Lt. Uhura on the show, but also worked for NASA as a recruiter; series creator Gene Roddenberry; his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who played Nurse Chapel; James Doohan, who played engineer Scott, and visual-effects wizard Douglas Trumbull. As actors, they flew between galaxies at warp speed. In this mission, they will fly past the moon.
The ashes of James Doohan, who died in 2005, have already been to space. A small portion of his cremains are on the ISS. Other samples launched in 2007 on the SpaceLoft XL rocket, on a Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, and on a Falcon 9 rocket in 2012. Gene Roddenberry's ashes have also been to space twice.
Read more about the memorial mission, which may launch as early as December, at Universe Today. -via Deadline
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