Is Space Beyond Real?
If you found this page after seeing an ad, or a Google search, or because a friend sent you a link, I’d guess a question came up somewhere in there:
Is Space Beyond real, or is someone about to take my money for nothing?
Fair question, and I’d ask it too.
Good news: this is very much real.
But, I’m not going to ask you to take my word for it. Here’s what happened when reporters at national outlets and industry press went and checked us out for themselves.
National Coverage
SpaceNews looked at us first, back in September 2025. Jason Rainbow’s piece is where a line I still use all the time first showed up in print: “We’re not competing with Celestis or Elysium. We’re competing with the shelf and the back corner of the closet.” He put it next to a direct price comparison against a competitor that starts at $3,495. He followed up in January 2026 to confirm our launch partner, Arrow Science and Technology, and the mission timeline.
TechCrunch ran what’s still our biggest single piece of coverage, that same month. Sean O’Kane wrote about the background that got me here: “a manufacturing engineer who worked on NASA’s space shuttle program before spending nearly a decade at Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin.”
Interesting Engineering followed in February. Chris Young asked me where the idea actually came from, and I gave him the honest answer: “After it was over, I started thinking: where are they now? You can’t track where the ashes go after scattering in the ocean.” And: “We already track every satellite in orbit, so that part of the problem is already solved.”
USA Today’s Eric Lagatta explained it about as plainly as anyone has: “Space Beyond allows families to pay to send a symbolic portion of cremated remains sealed inside a small satellite known as a cubesat that orbits Earth for years.”
Sealed is worth explaining, not just stating. The portion stays integrated and sealed inside the spacecraft for the whole mission. It’s never released. We do that because a cloud of cremated remains drifting loose in orbit would be a real hazard to other spacecraft nearby, and that’s the same standard behind the five-year mission length: “We’re setting the expected mission duration at five years to be responsible stewards of the space in orbit.”
On Air
Fox 35 Orlando had me on twice: an interview with reporter Matt Trezza, then live in studio on Good Day Orlando. CBS News Atlanta’s feature, hosted by Brian Unger (video here), stuck to the two questions families actually ask me: what it costs, and how you’d know your loved one’s satellite is still up there.
Neither one stayed local, which I didn’t expect. Both segments ran through their networks’ affiliate stations, well outside the markets where they were filmed. I’ve had people message me from states I’ve never set foot in, telling me they caught one of them on their own local Fox or CBS station.
The Jim Colbert Show (coverage at 02:09:20 – 02:15:20), syndicated through iHeartRadio, and the My Life & Wishes podcast both covered us too.
One I’ll call out specifically: when WGN Radio’s Your Money Matters covered the story on January 29 (coverage at 16:11 – 22:56), it wasn’t a producer reading someone else’s reporting. Sean O’Kane, the same reporter behind the TechCrunch piece, came on the air himself to talk about it.
Reach Beyond the Original Coverage
Past those, the story kept traveling on its own. It’s been cited or republished in more than 100 sources around the world at this point, wire services, regional newsrooms, international business press. I didn’t pay for any of that.
For Funeral Homes and Aftercare Providers
Connecting Directors is trade press for people who work with grieving families every single day. Patricia Hartley covered us under the headline “A $249 Ticket to the Stars,” and she framed it exactly the way I’d frame it myself: a memorial option to offer families, not competition for the funeral home itself.
Where That Leaves You
None of this tells you whether a spaceflight memorial is right for your family. That’s still yours to decide, and it should be. What it tells you is that the company checks out: real reporters, real outlets, willing to put their names on it.
But that only proves we’re real. It doesn’t tell you what it feels like to trust us with someone you love. For that, hear from someone who did.
Karin searched for years to find a way to send her husband Adam’s ashes to space. He’d dreamed of it since he was a kid.
“Space Beyond is an answer to my prayer…Everything else I had found was super expensive. Something I could not afford. Thank you Space Beyond for making this all possible, handled with care and in a very professional manner at an affordable price range.”
You can read Adam’s story, as well as several other Ashtronauts, on our site, or see what other families have said about us on Google.
I hope that’s enough to help you decide with confidence, just as Karin did. Otherwise, reach out any time via the Contact Us page. I’d be happy to talk it through with you.
— Ryan