Widow Astonished by Options After Husband Dies: "Space?! I Can Shoot Him Into Space?"
Rest in Space
Jeremiah Corner was a lifelong fan of "Star Trek."
In 2022, he succumbed to an aggressive autoimmune disease, leaving his wife Uli to decide what to do with his cremated remains, as KOMO News reports.
After doing some research, Corner found the perfect solution after discovering space burial company Celestis.
"Space?! I can shoot him into space?" Corner recalled in an interview with KOMO News.
Fitting End
Having your loved one's cremated remains launched into near-space doesn't come cheap, costing anywhere from $3,500 to $13,000 in the case of a deep space mission.
"I thought to myself, 'If he was alive, I'd be like, honey, do you want to keep your car or do you want to go to space?'" Corner told KOMO. "Space! So, I sold his car and sent him to space."
Since 1997, Celestis has been rocketing the ashes of the deceased into space. Over the decades, it's delivered the remains of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, legendary physicist Dr. Gerard O’Neill, and Apollo-era Moon astronaut Philip Chapman.
In total, the company has completed 17 memorial spaceflights, including one that impacted the Moon.
But not everybody agrees with the practice. In January, Navajo Nation president Buu Nygren filed a formal objection with NASA and the US Department of Transportation, decrying plans to deliver ashes to the lunar surface as part of US-based space startup Astrobotic's Peregrine Mission 1 as an "act of desecration."
Fortunately for Nygren — and unfortunately for Roddenberry's family — Peregrine never made it to the Moon and crash-landed in the Pacific Ocean after spending six days in orbit.
Corner's husband Jeremiah, however, fared much better. His remains were part of Celestis Enterprise mission — named in honor of "Star Trek," of course — into deep space, which launched on the same United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket as Celestis' moonbound Tranquility mission on January 8.
Corner was in good company, to say the least. Joining his ashes were the DNA of American presidents George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy, as well as some of the remains of several cast and crew members from the original "Star Trek" series.
"It felt very spiritual in a way because you're watching someone ascend, literally ascent into the heavens," his surviving wife told KOMO News. "One of the things I wrote on his memorial was I give you the universe. I loved him that much, and so I wanted to do that for him."
More on Celestis: Native Americans Say New Mission Will Desecrate the Moon
