A Texas-based space burial company is going to send the DNA of four former United States presidents to space.
The space burial company, Celestis, announced it on February 20 in a blog post, saying that they will be adding the symbolic remains of George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to their upcoming deep space remembrance Enterprise Flight, launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida on May 4, 2023.
"The presence of four iconic US presidents on its manifest is only the beginning of what will be a journey for the ages," Celestis wrote.
There will be additional cremated remains and DNA samples of Star Trek icons and legends on board as well.
Celestis' Enterprise Flight
Celestis said in their announcement blog post that they are sending hair samples originally from the Louis Mushro collection.
"These hair samples, which were originally from the Louis Mashro collection, along with the associated Certificates of Authenticity, were gifted to Celestis by an anonymous donor for the purpose of being included on a deep space mission," they wrote. "Louis Mushro was a well-known celebrity hair collector and appraiser who built a global reputation as the expert in this field before his passing in 2014. These hair samples have been in a climate-controlled facility for several years in preparation for this mission."
"Our Enterprise Flight is a historic mission by any standard," Co-founder and CEO of Celestis, Charles M. Chafer said in the post. "The overreaching goal of Celestis is to assist human expansion throughout the solar system. By adding the DNA of these American icons to Enterprise, we establish a precursor for future human missions and add to the historical record of human exploration of deep space."
The Enterprise Flight is expected to travel somewhere between 93 million to 186 million miles into space, beyond the Earth-moon system.