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Australian-born astronaut’s ashes fulfil dream

Nearly 50 years after his mission into space was aborted – and a year after his death – Australian-born astronaut Phillip K Chapman is to finally fulfil his life’s ambition, AAP reports.

Some of his ashes, sealed in a little capsule, will be taken on a memorial flight into orbit where they will briefly experience weightlessness of space before returning safely to Earth.

The flight is scheduled for 30 November.

Chapman’s remains will then be flown again on a permanent deep space mission.

His wife, Marie Tseng, says she is pleased he is finally getting to live out his boyhood dream of getting off “this little rock” and exploring the vastness of space.

He was an adventurer and was committed to supporting commercial space businesses so the Celestis flights resonated well with his life goals and personality.

He would be sorry that his living self will not be flying because he would want to conduct scientific experiments and revel in the experience.

The joyful and exciting Celestis flights are wonderful ways for us, the survivors, to commemorate Phil.

Born in Melbourne in 1935, Chapman spoke of his intergalactic dreams from the age of 12 and dedicated his life to advancing space exploration and civilisation.

He trained as a pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force before joining the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions for a winter on the frozen continent to experience living in isolated and difficult terrain.

Eager to get to the US, he joined MIT’s Experimental Astronomy Lab and in 1967 became Nasa’s first foreign-born scientist-astronaut.

He was the mission scientist for Apollo 14 – one of the six that landed humans on the moon – and claimed to be the man behind the televised “feather and hammer” experiment, where moon walkers tested the three-centuries-old Galileo Galilei theory that all objects fall with equal speed in a vacuum.

Chapman himself was slated to rocket into space in 1975 as part of the SkyLab B mission but in 1972 it was aborted, with then-president Richard Nixon deciding not to put more money into such projects.

Chapman resigned from Nasa later that year but never gave up on his passion.