The Strange Request Star Trek's Creator Had In His Last Will

Gene Roddenberry, the 70-year-old creator of "Star Trek," died of a heart attack in a Santa Monica, California hospital on October 25, 1991. While the original series he created was canceled after three seasons, between 1966 and 1969, before NBC canceled it due to low ratings, the writer and producer had conceived a beloved world that launched a behemoth franchise. Roddenberry spent more than a third of his life writing about space, but he never had the chance to go there. However, he specified in his will that he wanted his ashes blasted into outer space when the opportunity arose. 

"He would have given anything to have been able, just once, to go into that great galaxy he dreamed about, where so few men have gone before," Majel Roddenberry, his widow who played Nurse Chapel on the original "Star Trek", said in April 1994 (via Florida Today). "It was not possible." His dream may not have come true in life, though in death it's been fulfilled many times over. His ashes have traveled on a space shuttle, been blasted into orbit around the Earth, and have gone into deep space between Venus and Earth.

On October 22, 1992, the Space Shuttle Columbia rocketed heavenward. "The vehicle has a tremendous amount of speed, and tremendous power, as you're heading uphill," the mission commander, James Weatherbee told AmericaSpace in 2022. The 10-day mission saw the launch of an Italian satellite from the shuttle and a variety of experiments, including the testing of a robotic vision system. Unbeknownst to the world at large, there was a stowaway of sorts on this, Columbia's 13th mission.

At the behest of Majel Roddenberry, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin agreed to help her to fulfill the Star Trek creator's dream of traveling in space. Weatherbee brought some of Gene Roddenberry's ashes on the mission as part of the commander's personal effects. It was the first time in NASA's history in which someone's ashes went on a space mission. The shuttle safely returned to Earth, along with Roddenberry's ashes. But, tragically, a little more than a decade later, on February 1, 2023, the Space Shuttle Columbia burned up during reentry, killing all seven astronauts aboard due to a piece of foam from an external fuel tank striking the craft's left wing during takeoff.

Gene Roddenberry's ashes again took flight in April 1997 after a new company, Celestis approached Majel Roddenberry about including her husband's ashes in its inaugural flight. The Houston, Texas-based business was the first to offer space burials. Celestis blasted a small amount of Gene Roddenberry's ashes — 0.2 ounces — along with that of 23 others, including Timothy Leary, the former Harvard professor and LSD prophet, into space. The rocket carrying his and the others' remains orbited the Earth for five years before burning up in re-entry.

Celestis again launched a portion of the ashes of Gene and Majel Roddenberry (who died in 2008) into space in January 2024. They weren't alone. The ashes of actors DeForest Kelley (Leonard "Bones" McCoy); Nichelle Nichols (Uhura); and James Doohan (Montgomery "Scotty" Scott) were also on the rocket that is headed into deep space. When it reaches its final destination 205 million miles from Earth, it will be in a heliocentric orbit, circling the sun between Earth and Venus forever. Although Roddenberry was flawed — he was a serial philanderer among other issues — his vision of the future, where people of all races and backgrounds worked together to further the peaceful aims of humanity, inspired many. "Earth is the nest, the cradle, and we'll move out of it," Roddenberry told The Los Angeles Times in 1988. While in life, he didn't leave the nest for the "final frontier," in death he certainly did.