Rocket carrying late Nasa astronaut’s remains explodes over New Mexico

Rocket’s payload also included science experiments part of Nasa’s TechRise Student Challenge

A rocket carrying the cremated remains of a late Nasa astronaut exploded seconds after launch over the New Mexico desert.

The small suborbital rocket by Colorado-based company UP Aerospace was carrying student experiment payloads for Nasa as well as the cremated remains of astronaut Philip K Chapman who died in April 2021 and chemist Louise Ann O’Deen, among others, Gizmodo reported.

Dr Chapman was a radio physicist, selected as a scientist-astronaut by NASA in August 1967.

He was involved in preparations for Nasa’s Moon missions, serving as scientist for the Apollo 14 mission, the American space agency noted.

On Monday, just seconds after liftoff, the UP Aerospace rocket carrying Dr Chapman’s cremated remains suffered an anomaly and was destroyed in flight, according to local news.

The rocket was packed with 13 payloads, including a series of student science experiments as part of Nasa’s TechRise Student Challenge as well as cremated human remains of various people from Celestis, a company that specialises in space memorial services.

While the rocket was destroyed after liftoff, the Celestis payload “was unharmed and will be able to be relaunched”, the company noted. The remains were sent off by families wishing for a memorial service in space for their departed members.

“We are reviewing the details and the video with UP Aerospace. As soon as we have clearance from them about the details and the video itself, we will share all of that information with families via email,” it tweeted.

“All 120 flight capsules are safely in the hands of launch personnel and will be returned to us awaiting our next flight as soon as UP and Spaceport America complete their investigation and any required fixes are implemented,” Celestis chief Charles Chafer said in a statement.

Nasa noted in a statement on Tuesday that it would work with the TechRise project administrator and UP Aerospace to determine potential paths forward for the affected student payloads.

“We look forward to working with UP Aerospace to return to flying payloads and experimental technologies on future flights,” Christopher Baker, programme executive in Nasa’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said.

“While this is obviously a disappointing outcome for today’s flight, that should not diminish the work it took to get here. Each of these TechRise student teams should be proud of their accomplishment in delivering an experiment for launch and we will be working on future opportunities for them to see their experiments in space,” Mr Baker said.