It's their final frontier.
After eight months of delays, the rocket will finally eject into deep space the remains of 330 people from all walks of life, including George Washington and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
Texas-based company Celestis' first Enterprise Flight is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 2:18 a.m. Monday, and will be the first to release human remains on the moon or beyond by a private company. This will be the first time.
The two-stage Vulcan Centaur rocket will first deliver 62 1/4-inch and 1/2-inch titanium capsules filled with DNA and human remains to the moon's surface in a 6-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide device. Drop. It is called the Peregrine Lunar Module.
It will be a “perpetual monument.”
The spacecraft will then carry the remaining 268 capsules more than 185 million miles into deep space, where they “will orbit the sun forever,” said Celestis CEO and co-founder Charles Chafer. says.
“There have been many firsts in my career, but this will be the first commercial deep space mission ever undertaken, and I hope it will be the first of many more over the coming centuries.” ,” Chafer said.
The celestial payload is filled with luminous bodies.
An anonymous donor donated hair samples from former Presidents Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Partial remains of late Star Trek cast members Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), James Doohan (Scotty) and DeForest Kelly (Dr. McCoy) will also be on board.
The mission will also send the show's mastermind Roddenberry and his wife, Magel Barrett Roddenberry, into deep space.
“We flew Gene on the first mission in 1997, and Majel came on board with it as well. She said to me, 'When the time comes, you can send Gene and I on a deep space mission together. 'And I was 28 years old at the time and I had no reason to believe I couldn't do it, so I said, 'I'd be happy to do that,''' he recalled.
“This launch therefore represents not only the culmination of all our efforts to date, but also the fulfillment of the commitments I have made,” Chafer continued.
The flight will also fulfill a lifelong wish for Upper West Side-based sculptor and painter Louise Kaisch.
Louise, whose work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and the Whitney Museum of American Art, died in 2013 at the age of 87, but said she was “deeply fascinated” by space exploration and “obsessed with NASA.” His daughter, Melissa Kaisch, told the Post. she.
“My dream is for my ashes to be buried in space,” her mother once told her.
Melissa and her father, Morton Kaisch, who turns 97, will be watching the launch via online video streaming.
“It's incredibly overwhelming to think it's actually going to happen…I'm really excited for her dream of the ultimate voyage to come true,” she said.
Orbiting forever in deep space isn't cheap, costing just under $13,000.
A non-permanent send-off, such as a suborbital flight (where participants are sent back to Earth and their families), costs nearly $3,000, and orbiting the Earth costs nearly $5,000.
The mission was previously scheduled to launch on May 4, 2023.
Chafer, 70, who co-founded Celestis in 1995, insisted that “everything is looking good” ahead of Monday's launch.
