The July 4th launch of Rocket Lab’s 13th Electron rocket from Mahia, New Zealand marked the opening of Aeternum’s space memorial service, as it became the first European company offering customers the opportunity to send a loved one’s ashes into space. While it ascended around 100km into space (200km from earth), the satellite unfortunately didn’t quite reach its desired orbit (due to an issue with our carrier rocket), instead returning to earth earlier than intended for our Shooting Star service. A video of the launch is embedded below.
Despite our carrier rocket not making desired orbit this time, a huge amount was learned from our maiden launch. We have taken our hardware and processes for delivering ashes into space through the rigours of designing, testing, licensing and space qualifying, all of which were successfully showcased yesterday evening and performed as expected. We are therefore proud to announce that Aeternum is ready for business.
While failure to reach planned orbit is relatively uncommon in modern rocket launches (with around 98% finding success), the possibility is nonetheless something we take seriously. Aeternum guarantees that our customers will reach desired orbit, otherwise they will be launched again as a priority on our next immediate flight with no further charge.
We are now taking bookings for our next launch in July 2021 – please contact enquiries@aeternum.space if you’re interested in a space memorial service for you or a loved one.
Please find a video of Aeternum’s maiden launch below: