Buried With the Stars: Buy Your Deceased Loved Ones a Plot on the Moon!

Space burials are no longer the thing of science fiction and rich science fiction TV show producers are no more Finally, the departed loved ones will be carried to outer space by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

It may come as a surprise that space burial is a thing now, but since 1997, when pinches of 1960s icon Timothy Leary, Star Trek founder Gene Roddenberry, and many others went into orbit, a business named Celestis ("Making Your Loved One Part of Space History") has been offering the operation. Celestis and Elysium Space now partners with NASA to bring your remains to space.

Celestis vs. Elysium: Cremated Traces And Tests of DNA in Capsules

Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk of SpaceX, Bas Lansdorp of Mars One, and more are itching to take you into orbit now that the age of private space travel is truly starting to dawn.

Thomas Civeit of Elysium Space and Charles Chafer Celestis even wants to carry you to space. The only catch here is, you have to be dead. It will shoot your "cremains" (funeral directors speak for "ashes") to join the communications satellites, spy satellites, and thousands of other artificial bits and pieces that orbit the Earth.

Civeit says Elysium sends "dignified memorial spaceflight." If all goes well, Civeit says, the first launch could happen early next year. They will bring the ashes of up to 100 of the dear departed. NASA would also bring the DNA of the iconic sci-fi novelist Arthur C. Clarke with other deceased people who will travel to outer space next year.

"About six pounds of ashes are left by cremation," says Civeit, a retired NASA engineer who formed the business earlier this year.

Chafer, for his part, told Space.com that Celestis presents a range of choices for missions.

"Our Luna Service is among the most popular, as it affords families and friends the permanence of an off-planet service and provides a constant reminder in the night sky of a loved one's final resting place," he said.

According to Celestis' website, their memorial capsules will remain on the Moon as a permanent tribute to the brave souls who never stopped reaching for the stars.

How much?

If you choose Celestis to give you the full orbital experience, the price goes up to about $5,000. And you can travel all the way to the moon for $12,500, or even abandon the Earth-Moon system altogether. Gene Roddenberry is going to be doing it, too, Chafer notes. As long as the corporation agreed to bring both of them on the first interplanetary mission, his widow, Majel Roddenberry, let Celestis take her husband on a 1997 trip. (You offer a 50 percent fee to blend two sets of ashes together on either of Celestis' flights.)

Celestis has a much less pricey choice than what Elysium does if you just want to save money by sending your loved one's ashes into space. You can give Uncle Ralph parts on a suborbital trip for only $995, including the one that Alan Shepard, the first American in space, took in 1961. The ashes go up, remain in outer space for two minutes and 40 seconds, then fall down again to be given back to the bereaved.

If you choose Celestis to give you the full orbital experience, the price goes up to about $5,000. And you can travel all the way to the moon for $12,500, or even abandon the Earth-Moon system altogether. Gene Roddenberry is going to be doing it, too, Chafer notes. As long as the corporation agreed to bring both of them on the first interplanetary mission, his widow, Majel Roddenberry, let Celestis take her husband on a 1997 trip. (You offer a 50 percent fee to blend two sets of ashes together on either of Celestis' flights.)

But if you want to reach a postmortem orbit at the lowest possible expense, the way to go seems to be Elysium. The business plans to launch the cremains of its clients on a CubeSat, a standardized 4-by-4-by-4-inch box intended to place student projects into orbit as "secondary payloads," marking without taking up too much additional space together with wider, more complex experiments or commercial satellites. (In most instances, Celestis clients go as secondary payloads, too).