A new and rising company Celestis offers the chance to honor the deceased in a new and unique way. Celestis gives families a chance to send the cremated remains of their loved ones into space. Celestis offers multiple services ranging in prices from $1,295 to $32,500. Celestis has an “Earth Rise” service, an “Earth Orbit” service, a “Luna” service, and the “Voyager” service.

The “Earth Rise” service gives families the opportunity a chance to launch a symbolic portion of their cremated deceased into space, which will then return back home to the family.

“Earth Orbit” offers families the option to send the cremated remains of the deceased into orbit where it is estimated to stay anywhere from 10 to 240 years, after which it will reenter the atmosphere where it will harmlessly vaporize like a shooting star.

The “Luna” service will be sending cremated remains to the surface of the moon.

Lastly the “Voyager” service will send cremated remains out of Earths orbit and onward and outward to the depths of space.

Like Celestis, a company called Elysium Space offered more affordable plans for the same concept. Elysium Space sends the created remains into orbit for months or years, and like Celestis’s “Earth Orbit” service, the remains will eventually reenter the atmosphere, and vaporize. Elysium Space’s service is a low price of $2,000, where as Celestis offers the same service for $4,995. $2,000 is a great deal compared to the average $6,000 it cost to host a funeral, according to the National Funeral Director’s Association.

Elysium is working closely with commercial space flight companies, and soon hopes to widen their variety of services, much like Celestis. Much like Celestis, Elysium hopes to allow families the choice to send their deceased family to the moon, deep space, and even the sun.

As space funerals are gaining more popularity, other creative forms of spreading cremated remains are surfacing. Entrepreneur Steven Mitchell is developing a service to launch the cremated remains into the sky, using mini rockets, which it will then explode, scattering the ashes. Mitchell is working on developing a “do it yourself” version, along with a more advanced version that should travel the speed of sound.

Earlier this month, Ahmed Mohamed, a freshmen in Irving, Texas was arrested for building a bomb and bringing it to school. The incident instantly went viral when the teenager was pictured confused, handcuffed, and sporting a NASA t-shirt.

The day began with Ahmed showing his engineer teacher his new project, a homemade clock. His teacher was impressed but advised him not to show any other teachers, so Ahmed stuck it in his pencil box until it began to beep later that day in his english class. Ahmed took it out to try and shut the beeping off which is when things turned awry. Ahmeds english teacher mistook the home-made clock for a bomb and called the front office. From then the school neglected to evacuate the school, call the bomb squad, or isolate the “bomb”. Instead they called the police and held Ahmed and his clock in the office. From there the police proceeded to handcuff Ahmed and bring him to the juvenile detention center. What did they do with this ticking time “bomb”? They put it in the back of a police car and took pictures of the young man’s creation.

America rallied for  Ahmed Mohamed posting #istandwithahmed over 40,000 times the day following the incident. Ahmed received invitations and praise from Google, Facebook, Space Camp, MIT (his dream college), and the White House. Bobak Ferdowsi, American systems engineer at NASA even offered Ahmed the chance at a job working with Nasa; “Hey Ahmed, give me a call in a couple years. We could always  use smart, curious & creative people.”

Not everybody stood with Ahmed, however. Some of whom included former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin. “If that’s a clock, I’m the Queen of England” said Sarah Palin after reviewing the event. “Yep, believing that’s a clock in a school pencil box is like believing Barack Obama is ruling over the most transparent administration in history.” She also proceeded to call President Obama “childish” for supporting the young entrepreneur.

Ms. van Duyne, Mayor of Irving, Texas, stated “I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat. They have procedures to run when a possible threat or criminal act is discovered. They follow these procedures in the sole interest of protecting our children and school personnel. To the best of my knowledge, they followed protocol for investigating whether this was an attempt to bring a hoax bomb to a school campus. Following this

investigation, Irving PD has stated no charges will be filed against the student. I hope this incident does not serve as a deterrent against our police and school personnel from maintaining the safety and security of our schools.”

Ahmed does not believe he will be returning to Irving High school but he does intend to continue to create new technologies and continue in his engineering path.