On April 21, 1997, the cremated remains of 24 people were launched into space in the first ever space funeral.
One of those people was Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek.
Other notable cremated people on board included the physicist and space exploration activist Gerard O’Neill, the German rocket scientist Krafft Ehricke, and Timothy Leary, a psychologist who became famous for his research on psychedelic drugs.
These people’s remains were sent to space via a company called Celestis, which charges thousands of dollars for these memorial spaceflights.
It only launches small samples of the cremated remains, because launching all of it would be way more expensive.
Source: https://www.space.com/39251-on-this-day-in-space.html
