Ashes of the late James Dohan, who played chief engineer Montgomery Scott on the original Star Trek TV series, on board the International Space Station for 12 years – W. Times from London He has a great backstory of how this happened. Dohan passed away in 2005 at the age of 85, and his family wanted to fulfill his desire to join the International Space Station.

Official requests to bring Doohan ashes on the International Space Station have been denied, but Richard Garriott – nobody The first ordinary citizens to travel On the space station – I managed to smuggle some Doohan ashes to the Columbus unit on the space station. Garriot says he took a laminated photograph of Dohan and some of his ashes and placed it under the floor of Columbus. He hasn’t told anyone about the scheme – only he and the Dohan family know yet.

“It was completely secret,” Garriot told The Times. “His family was so happy that Ash made it there, but we were all disappointed that we hadn’t talked about it publicly for so long. It’s now been enough time,”

This is not the first time that Dohan’s ashes have reached the sky. Part of its ashes was on board a SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, but that rocket failed minutes after launch. And in 2012, a pitcher of some Dohan’s ashes He flew into space On board the SpaceX Falcon 9. According to Times, Dohan’s ashes traveled about 1.7 billion miles through space, and orbited Earth more than 70,000 times.

Dohan’s son Chris thanked Garriot for smuggling his late father’s ashes aboard the International Space Station. He said, “What he did was impressive – he meant a lot to me, a lot to my family and meant a lot to my father.”

Years after his death, Scotty is still boldly progressing … well, you know the rest.