Why am I going to send my son’s ashes to the Moon – 12/26/2023 – Science

In the new year, a rocket will take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a groundbreaking mission — making the Moon the final resting place for more than 70 people, including 16-year-old Liam Anand.

“When I leave the house and look up,” his mother Nadine told the BBC, “knowing that part of his body is on the moon… it will be magical, exciting and comforting.”

When Liam, from Dieppe, Canada, died in a motorcycle accident in 2018, his family wanted more than just a standard funeral.

“We knew it had to be something that represented him,” says Nadine.

Liam, a teenager full of energy and who always seemed to be in a rush, according to his family, dreamed of participating in a mission to Mars when he was older, or of getting involved in an asteroid mining business.

One afternoon, years after the young man’s death, Nadine remembered his love for space, started doing research on the internet and came across the new lunar funeral service.

Now, some of Liam’s ashes will be on board the Peregrine lunar probe when it lands next year.

Nadine says having her son be part of the mission helped the family’s healing process, and this unique resting place will give them a permanent way to remember him.

“He wanted to go to space. So his family, friends, whoever misses him or wants to celebrate him, can just look up and say hi,” says the teenager’s mother.

“It’s like we honor him.”

Childhood dream

“When I founded the company, I thought we were going to be an aerospace company,” he said. “But I learned very early on that we are a grief counseling company.”

After growing up watching the Apollo missions as a student, he began a career in the commercial space industry, including helping to launch the first privately funded commercial rocket.

In 1995, he founded Celestis, which had already launched samples of people’s ashes or DNA into orbit. For the lunar mission, the company purchased space on the Peregrine probe, whose main mission is to land scientific experiments on the Moon.

The new service, said Chafer, costs approximately “the value of a traditional funeral in the United States”, around US$13,000 (R$63,000).

“The rocket costs are a surprisingly small portion,” he added. “The biggest part is that it’s an intensely service-oriented business.”

His love of science led him to industry, but now he enjoys helping families cope with tragedies and finds it especially rewarding that service can bring joy to people with terminal illnesses.

He says he’s always touched by people who say, “Dad hasn’t smiled much the last few days, but when we told him what we were going to do for him, he smiled for the rest of his life.”

“There aren’t many jobs where you get that kind of feedback.”

100 thousand years

Michael Clive remembers the moment he told his father, Alan — then seriously ill with cancer — that he was planning to send some of his ashes to the Moon.

“Despite all the medication, we managed to tell him this,” he says.

“When I told my dad we were sending his ashes to the moon, he smiled and said, ‘Well, that sounds cool.'”

Reading science fiction as a boy in the 1950s gave Alan a lifelong love, and Michael remembers the family watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation” together, with him and his sister describing the events on screen to Alan, who was blind.

His father was also involved in space education groups, including the Planetary Society and the Challenger Center, and through them Clive and Alan met Eugene Shoemaker.

At the moment, the famous astronomer and geologist, who died in 1997, is the only person who has his ashes on the Moon.

Part of his remains were on a NASA probe that deliberately crashed into the Moon so that the impact could be studied by scientists.

Michael is happy that his father’s ashes will arrive in a softer, more conventional landing, and the Moon’s sterile, weather-free surface means they can remain there undisturbed for millennia.

“In a thousand years it will still be there, and in 10 thousand years it will probably still be there, and maybe even in 100 thousand years.”

“There’s not much that can actually last that long on Earth.”

He hopes that when his children grow up, one day they can fly to the moon to visit their grandfather, if new technologies make space travel more routine.

In the less distant future, Nadine is looking forward to attending the launch of the Peregrine probe with her husband Sanjiv and Liam’s four brothers.

“If Liam could see what we’re doing for him, he’d be happy,” she says.

“He would be flattered because he likes a little attention, but not too much.”

“The release will be part of our healing process and our grief,” she added. “It will be a happy moment. I know there will be tears for sure, but they will be tears of happiness.”