A rocket carrying human ashes has exploded over the New Mexico desert for a memorial service in space. Fortunately, more than 100 capsules containing cremated human remains were reportedly recovered.
Up Aerospace launched its suborbital rocket from Spaceport America on Monday. The rocket carried the remains of more than a dozen student experiment payloads for NASA, as well as the ashes of a deceased NASA astronaut and a chemist, that families sent to a suborbital memorial service. However, the rocket suffered a fatal anomaly that caused it to explode about three seconds after takeoff.
The cremated ashes survived the explosion and were saved, according to Celestis, the space memorial service. “All 120 flight capsules are safely in the hands of the launch personnel and will be returned to us while we await our next flight,” said Charles Chafer, Celestis co-founder and CEO, in an email statement. The care and professionalism of our launch service provider, Up Aerospace, ensures that the Celestis payload is undamaged and can be relaunched.”
The Texas-based company, which specializes in ejecting human ashes into space, designs its launch missions so that there is a reasonable chance to recover payloads should the rocket fail to reach space, Chafer said. Celestis’ Aurora Flight mission included the cremated remains of chemist Louise Ann O’Deen, as well as NASA astronaut Philip K. Chapman, who died in April 2021. Chafer said the recovered payloads will be resent on Perseverance Flight, the company’s next mission, which is scheduled to take place “as soon as UP and Spaceport America have completed their investigations and necessary corrections have been made.”
The rocket was also carrying 13 more payloads from the TechRise Student Challenge, some of the science and technology experiments created by NASA’s sixth to 12th grade students. But NASA has promised to launch other TechRise experiments in the future rather than recovering the payload.
“Each of these TechRise student teams should be proud of their achievements in presenting an experiment for launch, and we will work on future opportunities to see their experiments in space,” Christopher Baker, program manager for the Flight Opportunities program at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
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