Star Trek's Scotty beamed up

Star Trek legend James Doohan had his last wish fulfilled on Sunday when his ashes were blasted into space on a private rocket.

The 85-year-old, who played chief engineer Montgomery Scott on the Starship Enterprise from the show’s inception in 1966 and died in July 2005, was a lifelong space fan and made famous the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty.”

A small portion of his remains were loaded into a capsule alongside the ashes of another astronaut and 200 other people whose families had paid nearly £250 for the privilege, before being rocketed into space from a launchpad in the New Mexico desert.

The rocket was only in space briefly before falling back to earth as planned, but James’s widow, Wende, said her husband would have been over the moon about the prospect of one last journey into space.

“He would be ecstatic,” she said. “He would be the one pressing the button. He totally was so into space.”

Click here to see the launch on BBC Online