“To Boldly Go…”

Spaceport America, N.M. – April 30,2007 – He played “Scotty” on Star Trek and always said he wanted to go on one final mission, just like Star Trek creator and friend Gene Roddenberry. James Doohan did just that on Saturday. The cremated remains of Doohan, as well as the remains of NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper and more than 200 people from all walks of life, took a round-trip suborbital flight after blasting off from New Mexico's Spaceport America. Also flown into space were dozens of student experiments from elementary schools to high schools to universities from throughout America and the world. Celestis, Inc., which specializes in sending cremated remains into space, selected UP Aerospace as the launch services provider for the memorial spaceflight mission. About 500 family, friends and fans were on hand to bid a final farewell to Doohan, who played the USS Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, as well as the others whose remains were sent rocketing toward space. Doohan's widow, Wende, and Cooper’s widow, Suzan, pushed the launch button that fired the rocket. Doohan died in 2005 at age 85. Cooper, who first went into space in 1963, died in 2004 at age 77. The remains of Roddenberry were sent into space in 1997. If you’d like to send the remains of someone you know into space, it’s not too late. The Explorers Flight, being planned for the third quarter of 2007, is slated to be the largest ever memorial spaceflight with 238 participants from 13 countries aboard. You can read about the participants by clicking here. Saturday’s launch was the first successful launch into space at Spaceport America, which will serve as headquarters to Virgin Galactic in about three years. "This launch has christened Spaceport America," said Rick Homans, the new director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, in a press release handed out on site. "Today is all about entrepreneurs blazing a commercial path into space."

In this undated publicity still provided by Paramount Pictures, actor James Doohan appears in character as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in a scene from the 1994 film "Star Trek Generations." Doohan played the chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and movies; his character responded to the command "Beam me up, Scotty." He died in 2005, at the age of 85, but his ashes were launched into space on April 28, 2007. (Elliott Marks/ Paramount Pictures/ AP Photo ) One of the original seven NASA Mercury astronauts, Gordon, “Gordo” Cooper is seen in a NASA publicity photo. Cooper, who passed away in 2004, was a veteran of two space missions and logged 222 hours in space before retiring from NASA in 1970. (NASA Photo) The Rocket containing a payload that holds the ashes of James Doohan, Gordon Cooper and 200 others.

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