SYFY Wire by Matthew Jackson 12/29/2020
After years of playing spacefaring engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott on various iterations of Star Trek, actor James Doohan had a wish upon his death: That his ashes would one day go to space. In 2007, two years after the actor's death, he almost got his wish when a portion of his remains flew on a suborbital rocket. In 2008 another portion of ashes was supposed to enter orbit over the Earth, but the rocket that was carrying them failed, and that was seemingly the end of Doohan's real-life space saga.
Unless, of course, you're one of the handful of people who knew that Doohan's ashes have been orbiting the Earth onboard the International Space Station for the last 12 years.
Over the Christmas holiday, the Times of London ran the unlikely story of how Doohan's ashes wound up on the ISS, courtesy of his son Chris and legendary Ultima game designer Richard Garriott. According to Garriott, who flew a private mission to the ISS in 2008, the story was a very "clandestine" affair due to spaceflight procedures and policies, but now than more than a decade has passed with Doohan's ashes spinning around the Earth, he and Chris Doohan felt comfortable sharing how it all happened.
“His family were very pleased that the ashes made it up there but we were all disappointed we didn’t get to talk about it publicly for so long. Now enough time has passed that we can,†Garriott said.
More:
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/ashes-star-trek-scotty-smuggled-international-space-station
