The first rocket launch to memorialize James Doohan by taking a portion of his cremated remains into space has been set for Saturday, April 28, in New Mexico, with a public memorial planned for the day prior, according to StarTrek.com.
The memorial service will be held at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo on Friday, April 27. The Saturday launch will take place at New Mexico’s new “Spaceport America” location adjacent to the White Sands Missile Range. A specific time of day has not yet been set for either event. Both the memorial and viewing of the launch will be open to the general public. Doohan’s widow, Wende, will be present at both events, and other special guests may be announced later.
“While ‘Scotty’ lived this, Jimmy lived for this,” Ms. Doohan said in a press release. “I will be there to see the launch, knowing that Jimmy is participating in an industry which he loved so very much.â€
Space Services Inc. (SSI), aka Celestis, provides the memorial spaceflight service by partnering with a launch provider and attaching a canister of modules containing a “symbolic portion” of each participant’s ashes — seven grams or less — to a rocket vehicle, usually as a “secondary payload.”
The April launch is dubbed “The Legacy Flight,” and will memorialize 201 deceased besides Doohan. John Meredyth Lucas, a writer/director/producer on the Original Series (“Elaan of Troyius,” etc.), who died in 2002, will also be part of that flight. So will “Mercury 7” astronaut Gordon Cooper, who died in 2004, and he will also have a memorial service devoted to him at the museum on the 27th.
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