In time for the one-year anniversary of the passing of James Doohan, Space Services Inc. (SSI) has announced that a memorial spaceflight carrying a portion of his cremated remains will be launched October 21 from a New Mexico spaceport, with a public service held the day before.

SSI, operating under the name Celestis Inc., has arranged to attach modules containing the ashes of the beloved Star Trek actor to a SpaceLoft XL rocket scheduled to lift off from Spaceport America, a new launching facility near Las Cruces, N.M., on that October date.

Dubbed "The Legacy Flight," this journey will also include memorializations of American astronaut L. Gordon Cooper, and Original Series writer/director/producer John Meredyth Lucas.

The Legacy Flight does not replace the Explorers Flight, which has been delayed since late last year. Rather, Legacy is being launched as an additional memorial spaceflight, as a courtesy by Celestis to the families of the deceased whose plans have been on hold. The Explorers Flight has been and still is set to take place aboard a Falcon 1 rocket, but that vehicle has yet to achieve a successful test launch. Currently the Explorers Flight is projected to take place in the first three months of 2007, either from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California or from the Marshall Islands.

While the Explorers Flight will lift participants' remains into orbit for an indeterminate number of years — after which they will burn up in the atmosphere — the New Mexico launch is "Earth-Return," designed to take the capsules into zero-gravity space briefly and return them safely to Earth, thus symbolically attaining astronaut status for the participants. The capsules will be returned to the families as a keepsake, mounted on a plaque commemorating the voyage.

The Legacy Flight will coincide with the second annual X Prize Cup, an international festival of spaceflight presented by the X Prize Foundation, headed by space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis.

A public memorial service honoring Doohan, Lucas, Cooper and all of the Legacy participants will be held the day before, October 20, at a location near the launch site. The public is invited, and Doohan's widow, Wende, will be present. Details are forthcoming and will be posted on the new Legacy Flight update page.

Such a memorial spaceflight was held by SSI for the late Gene Roddenberry in 1997, six years after he died.

Fans can post tribute messages for Doohan at this link. These messages will be put on disc and included with the payload on the Explorers Flight rather than the Legacy Flight, so that they can accompany the ashes in orbit for an extended period of time.

Doohan died July 20, 2005, at age 85 from pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's disease.

The Canadian-born actor portrayed "Montgomery Scott," the Aberdeen-accented engineer of the Starship Enterprise who always kept his precious warp engines purring through every interstellar crisis.

Doohan's date of birth and date of death, taken together, seem poetic. His birthday, March 3, coincides with that of inventor Alexander Graham Bell. July 20 is the anniversary of mankind's first steps on another world, as Neil Armstrong achieved that "giant leap" on the Moon in 1969.