What Can You Do With Ashes?
From Favourite Places to a Journey Among the Stars
Scattering is often the first thing that comes to mind when we think about what to do with ashes.
Among roses, as the family of American actor Don DeFore chose. Into the Atlantic, as the family of John F. Kennedy Jr. did off the Massachusetts coast. From mountains, beaches and favourite holiday spots, families have always found ways to connect someone they love with a place that held meaning in their life.
There is something beautifully simple about that idea: this place mattered to you, so part of you belongs here.
Today, remembrance can travel even further.
In 1992, a small portion of the ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry travelled aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. Five years later, another portion made the journey into Earth orbit aboard the world’s first private memorial spaceflight.
For the man who imagined humanity travelling among the stars, it seems almost wonderfully inevitable.
And it raises an intriguing question:
Where could a story go next?
Start with the life
The most meaningful choices begin with the person.
Maybe they were happiest beside the ocean, spent years travelling, loved their garden, collected records, watched the night sky or always had another adventure planned. There may have been a mountain they climbed, a country they returned to again and again, or a song that still brings them immediately into the room.
These are the things that made someone unmistakably themselves.
And they offer a wonderful starting point for remembrance.
A memorial says something about how they lived.
Ashes can become part of more than one story
Cremation creates the possibility for more than one journey.
A portion can stay close to home. Some may be scattered in a favourite place. Different family members can create their own connections in different parts of the world.
And a symbolic portion can make an entirely different journey.
Gene Roddenberry’s two spaceflights make this point rather neatly. His first journey aboard Columbia in 1992 became one chapter. Another portion of his ashes travelled into orbit five years later.
For families spread across countries and continents, this flexibility can be particularly meaningful. Memories connect people across places, countries and generations.
A life can belong to many places.
So can its stories.
And then there is space
Space occupies an extraordinary place in our collective imagination.
For some, it is tied to childhood memories of the Moon landings. For others, it is Star Trek, telescopes in the backyard, science lessons that actually held their attention, or nights spent trying to identify a bright object moving across the sky.
There are people who follow rocket launches the way others follow sport. People who can name constellations. People who have never stopped wondering what is out there.
And there are plenty of people who simply look up.
For someone like that, a memorial spaceflight can feel wonderfully fitting.
A symbolic portion of ashes is secured inside a memorial capsule and prepared to travel aboard a real commercial spaceflight.
After the planning, engineering and anticipation comes a moment most families could once only have imagined: watching a rocket leave Earth knowing that someone they love has begun a journey into space.
A journey as meaningful as the destination
At StardustMe, the experience begins well before launch.
There is the capsule itself, small enough to sit in the palm of a hand. Families choose an engraving: a name, a date, a private message or simply a few words that seem to say everything.
Each flight has its own mission patch, continuing a long-standing spaceflight tradition and creating a keepsake for the families who share the mission.
Then there are the many details happening behind the scenes: preparation, testing, payload integration, launch partners and the logistics required to bring a commercial space mission together.
Eventually, the rocket leaves the pad.
For StardustMe’s orbital missions, the journey continues after lift-off. Families can follow the spacecraft as it travels around Earth, passing over oceans, countries and continents.
There is something remarkable about looking towards the sky and knowing that a mission carrying someone you love is somewhere overhead.
It gives the simple act of looking up an entirely new meaning.
Celebrating a life can look wonderfully different
Memory has a habit of appearing when it feels like it.
A song comes on in the car and suddenly you’re somewhere you haven’t thought about for twenty years. Someone tells the family story everybody already knows, and everybody still laughs. You find an old photograph and immediately remember what happened five minutes before it was taken.
A familiar place, a handwritten note, a ridiculous saying or a favourite meal can carry a person through our lives in ways both big and small.
They become part of the stories we continue to tell, the places we return to and the memories that still make us smile.
That is what makes celebrating a life so personal.
For one person, the ocean will always feel right. For another, a garden. Someone else might belong on a mountain, in a favourite city or somewhere the family has returned to for generations.
And for the person who spent a lifetime looking upward?
Perhaps among the stars.
So what can you do with someone’s ashes?
The possibilities are wider than many of us realise.
The most meaningful answer begins with the life.
Think about the places, passions, adventures, jokes and memories that belonged to that person. Think about what would make the people who knew them best immediately say, yes — that feels like them.
Then build the remembrance around that.
It might be familiar, unexpected or even involve a rocket.
Because deciding what to do with ashes is an opportunity to choose how a life continues to be celebrated.
Look Up. Remember. Celebrate.
Curious about a journey into space?
Read Can You Send Ashes Into Space? Yes — And the Journey Is Quite Extraordinary or explore How StardustMe Works.