SpaceX Falcon Heavy to launch ashes of an all-star, astronaut and
others
When Elon Musk's huge Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off for just the
third time Monday evening, it will be carrying the remains of over 100
earthlings to orbit.Spaceflight memorial company Celestis is sending individual
canisters containing the cremated remains of its clients into space, where they
will orbit our planet until their cosmic urns eventually re-enter Earth's
atmosphere and burn up just like a shooting star.
Dubbed the Heritage Flight, the cremains are hosted by the General
Atomics Orbital Test Bed, which is just one of 24 satellites set to launch atop
Falcon Heavy from Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
Celestis has been sending loved ones to the beyond for over two
decades, even offering a similar service for beloved pets.
Among the individuals to be memorialized this week is Bill Pogue, a
NASA astronaut who was on the support crew for the historic Apollo 11 moon
landing mission in 1969. Pogue later spent 84 days aboard the Skylab space
station, setting spaceflight endurance and distance records at the time.
Also on the Heritage Flight is Masaru Tomita, who was a two-time all
star player in Japan's Nippon Pro Baseball league, and Marj Kreuger, who worked
for NASA in the 1960s and published both science fiction and technical science
papers, including one about the use of nuclear power in space.
Memorial biographies for over 120 of the people aboard the flight are
available online, and they're pretty fascinating reads.
You can watch the launch online, which is set for no earlier than
11:30 p.m. EDT Monday night. But for some more perspective on its most emotional
payload, you can also watch the livestream of the Heritage Flight Memorial
Service below, which begins at 2:50 p.m. EDT Monday.
The Heritage Flight Memorial Service |
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