A privately owned rocket blasted off for a trial run to the International Space Station yesterday, carrying more than food and supplies for the crew.
Tucked into the rocket’s second stage are the cremated remains of more than 300 hardcore space fans finally making it into the final frontier.
Space Exploration Technologies’ Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 3:44am. The company, also known as SpaceX, replaced a faulty engine valve that triggered a last-second halt to its initial launch attempt on Saturday.
The rocket’s prime cargo is a 4.4m tall capsule called Dragon that is filled with food, clothes and supplies for the six astronauts and cosmonauts living aboard the space station, a US$100 billion project of 15 countries that flies more than 330km above Earth.
Falcon 9 carries a secondary payload as well — a container holding lipstick-tube-sized canisters filled with cremated remains. The deceased include Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, who died in 2004, and actor James Doohan, who portrayed chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the original Star Trek television series. Doohan died in 2005.
If all goes as planned, nine -minutes and 49 seconds after liftoff, Dragon’s second stage will separate. It should spend the next year or so circling Earth as an orbital space memorial before it is pulled back into the atmosphere and incinerated.
Houston-based Celestis Inc has arranged for cremated remains to be flown in space 10 times previously, though not all the launches have been successful.
The Earth-orbiting space memorials cost about US$3,000. Celestis also arranges for suborbital flights and launches to the moon. Relatives are invited to attend the launch and then participate in a group memorial service.
The Falcon 9 flight is the firm’s biggest yet, Charles Chafer, chief executive officer of parent company Space Services, wrote on his Facebook page. Ashes from 308 people are aboard, though most are reflights from a failed 2008 launch.
“With my Celestis team,” Chafer posted on his Facebook page on Saturday, as the group gathered to watch the launch attempt. “Ignition, no liftoff ... wow that was close. Try again Tuesday.”
Chafer declined an interview request.
“We made a commitment not to comment publicly until after the mission,” he wrote in an e-mail.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to