US-based Celestis is now extending its ‘space memorial’ services to Mars. The company has announced its Mars300 project that will send cremated remains and DNA samples of 300 individuals to the red planet in 2030.
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Celestis was established in 1997 to honour space enthusiasts by launching their remains into space. The spot is reserved by family members of the deceased and their ashes or DNA samples are sealed in canisters, which are then integrated into a rocket. Since its foundation, Celestis has organised 25 such memorial flights as rideshare missions on different rockets.
It offers various kinds of memorial services in which the capsules either orbit the Earth and crash into ocean, get sent to the Moon’s orbit/surface or get flung out of the Earth-Moon system in deep space.
The Mars300 project
According to Celestis, it wants to create humanity’s first memorial presence on another world through the Mars300 project. The slots are already open for booking and the capsules will be placed on a future Mars-bound cargo spacecraft. It’s most likely to be SpaceX‘s Starship which is being prepared for Mars missions and is supposed to carry Italian payloads on its first flight to the planet. The capsule contents are likely to be scattered on the Martian land, however, Celestis has stated per Space.com that its primary goal is completing the objecting while preserving the red planet’s ecosphere.
The service will cost $24,995 (Rs 22.16 lakh) and Celestis is encouraging potential customers to secure slots with a 10% down payment. It even assures that in case the Mars mission gets delayed, the capsules will be transferred to the next available mission. The service is also fully refundable until all milestones are achieved.
About the payload, the company says – “Each memorial capsule — ashes or DNA — is prepared using certified laboratory procedures and verified chain of custody, ensuring authenticity and respect.“
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The most recent flight took place in June which included 166 capsules sealed inside a reentry spacecraft ‘Nyx’ designed by a European company named The Exploration. It was launched by SpaceX as a Transporter-14 rideshare mission. Unfortunately, everything didn’t go as planned because the spacecraft failed to deploy its parachutes before splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, and the capsules were lost at sea. One of the capsules contained the ashes of a dog from Texas whose owners decided to honour him through the flight.
“The parachute system failed, resulting in the Nyx capsule impacting the Pacific Ocean and dispersing its contents at sea,” Celestis had stated, per Space.com. If it’s an orbital flight, the service is considered complete after the company recovers the capsules and hands them over to the family members. Unfortunately in this case, the mission was only partly successful.
Flights in the past have honoured individuals like NASA astronauts Philip K. Chapman and Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., Star Trek actors DeForest Kelley and Nichelle Nichols, the first woman astrogeologist Mareta West, another Star Trek actor James Doohan and Japanese baseball player Masaru Tomita among others.
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