This startup will send 1,000 people’s ashes to space — affordably — in 2027

Summary

Ryan Mitchell, the founder of a startup called Space Beyond, remembers looking at the night sky while camping at a state park and wondering what he should do next. A manufacturing engineer who worked on NASA’s space shuttle program before spending nearly a decade at Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, Mitchell was considering his options. In those jobs, he had seen the cost to access space come down dramatically, thanks in large part to Blue Origin’s rival SpaceX. Those stars in the sky, he thought, seemed closer than ever. Mitchell told TechCrunch that an idea finally clicked when he was attending a family member’s ash-spreading ceremony. “When it was over, we were kind of like, ‘now what?’ The moment was gone,” he said. He remembered thinking: “How could I do this better?” That, he said, was the beginning of building Space Beyond and its “Ashes to Space” program, which will use a CubeSat, a class of miniature cube-shaped satellites, to send as many as 1,000 people’s ashes to space in one go. On Thursday, Space Beyond announced it signed a launch services agreement with Arrow Science & Technology, which will integrate the CubeSat on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission scheduled for October 2027. Sending people’s ashes to space is not a new idea. Companies like Celestis have been doing it since the 1990s. What Mitchell said is different about Space Beyond is that it’s doing it affordably — with its cheapest offering coming in at just $249. Other options typically cost in the thousands of dollars. (That said, customers will need to have the cremation performed elsewhere.) Mitchell said Space Beyond has achieved this a few ways. Foremost is the ride-share model, which has greatly democratized access to space in general. Companies can now develop small CubeSats that get integrated into larger spacecraft for a fraction of the total price to hitch a ride on a Falcon 9, allowing for all sorts of new science and small-scale commercial missions. Techcrunch event San Fra...