Illinois family honors late father by sending his DNA on deep space mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A Metro East family will send their late father’s DNA on a historic deep space mission in a few days to celebrate his life and passion for space exploration.

Michael Dennis McKinney Sr., a longtime resident of Wood River, Illinois, is one of 264 people with remains or DNA aboard the inaugural flight of the United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket.

The rocket launch is set for Monday, Jan. 8, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It’s part of a deep-space Voyager mission known as the “Enterprise Flight,” and it’s been in the works for nearly three decades.

Michael was a recent addition to the flight. A father of two, Michael was born deaf. He overcame several communication barriers to pursue a career in electrical engineering and loved to study the great unknown. Michael died at the age of 60 in 2018.

“He was a big success in my eyes,” said Sam McKinney on his father. “He pushed through everything, did as much as he could, and the world was a lot better for it.”

Michael learned sign language as a teenager, invented several personal gadgets as an adult, and also enjoyed scuba diving. Sam says he also had a subscription to NASA TV and showed him several planets and phenomena through a telescope over the years. Friends and family lovingly gave Michael the nickname “The Deaf Astronaut,” many believing he could have made that his career if he wasn’t deaf.

After his father passed away, Sam wanted to find some way to give him a tribute through space.

“I knew we had to do something for him because it was so sudden and we didn’t have any plans,” said Sam. “I instantly went up online and I was like, ‘We need to launch him into space somehow.’ And I had no idea how that worked, but I did a bunch of Google searches, found this program and just didn’t even question it. We just all said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ And we’ve been excited ever since.”

The opportunity was made possible with help from commercial space agency Celestis, Inc.

“Our CEO [Charlie Chafer] has been at the ground level of the birth of commercial spaceflight,” said Celestis President Colby Youngblood. “He wanted to make space accessible to every person. That was the impetus behind creating Celestis, to be able to do that.”

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“One of the ways to do that is, we know that we all pass,” Youngblood continued. “We can bring the space as low as $3,000 [to anyone]. You can send your DNA or the ashes of your loved one to space. And so that’s a really good feeling.”

Youngblood says the Vulcan launch will serve as a test for ULA, which has a pending contract with the U.S. government to coordinate another 50-75 launches beyond this year for exploration and research purposes.

“Our flight capsules are going to be attached to the Vulcan Centuar rocket,” said Youngblood. “It’s going to be leaving the Earth-Moon system and going into a heliocentric orbit around the sun.”

On board with Michael’s remains will be hundreds of others, including but not limited to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel, several Star Trek cast members, Apollo astronaut Philip Chapman, and U.S. presidents George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy.

Sam says he couldn’t imagine a better opportunity for his father.

“He was a big Star Trek fan, so it’s a pretty big deal that he’s going with them,” said Sam. “Star Trek was on the leading edge of representation. There was actually an episode where there was a deaf man who was leading an entire culture, and the actor was deaf. That was such a big moment for [Michael]. I don’t think there’s a more tailored launch. There’s no doubt that this was perfect for him.”

For Sam, there’s more purpose behind sending his father to space than just to honor his life.

“I was hoping that in some way, being able to have him do this, maybe he could be a little bit of a pathway to get more deaf acceptance,” said Sam. “[Get] more deaf people into science, and maybe take advantage of the secret intelligence that is around that people just don’t accept.”

He continued, “Hopefully we can be a little bit more accepting of deaf people, allowing them to achieve their dreams, and find ways to just accept people who are different from ourselves into our lives a little bit more.”

For more information on the Vulcan launch, CLICK HERE.

For a closer look at memorial space services offered through Celestis, CLICK HERE.

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