14 DAY TRIAL // If you find regular burials or cremations dull, and want to spice up your passing, or that of a loved one, you now have an option that did not exist previously. By contacting Elysium Space and taking them up on their offer, you could have your remains, or those of a loved one, sent into space, and then have them cremated high in the Earth's atmosphere.
The company will be providing memorial space flights starting in 2014, and a one-way trip to space is currently being sold at $1,999 (€1,480). The sample ashes you send to the company will be launched into space in a special urn, and will orbit the planet for several months.
After the orbit decays, the urn will reenter Earth's atmosphere, and will burn up as a shooting star in the night sky. Elysium Space has already developed a smartphone app that allows users to track ashes through the heavens, so that they do not miss their loved ones' shooting stars.
The company will use rocket launches from Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) to deliver the ash urns into orbit, Space reports.