Cremated remains of Star Trek actor James Doohan and Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper launched into suborbital space.

The cremated remains of Star Trek actor James Doohan were launched into suborbital space today aboard a rocket in New Mexico.

The Legacy Flight memorial spaceflight, which also included the ashes of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper along with those of 200 others, took off at 8:56am local time. Since it was a suborbital flight, the rocket soon parachuted back to Earth, coming down at the White Sands Missile Range.

The 20-foot rocket also contained a CD with more than 11,000 condolences and fan notes for Doohan, best known as for his portrayal of Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the popular scifi series. The actor, who died in July 2005 at age 85, expressed that his final wishes were to have his remains blasted into space after Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s remains were launched in 1997. (Roddenberry, who died in 1991, was memorialized on Space Service’s Founders Flight in 1997.)

Family members paid $495 to Space Services’s Celestis, Inc. to place a few grams of their relatives’ ashes in capsules on the rocket. Watching the take off from about 4 miles away, the crowd cheered and cried as the rocket flew and the mission control center announced the launch was successful.

Today’s flight was the first successful launch from Spaceport America, a commercial spaceport being developed in the southern New Mexico desert. The spaceport is currently a 100-foot by 25-foot concrete slab in a patch of desert more than 50 miles north of Las Cruces.

Source: Yahoo!; Space Services, Inc.