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SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster on the first Falcon Heavy launch, but it\u2019s hrady the only unusual object sent into space in recent years. (credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n
by Tony Milligan
Monday, October 13, 2025<\/p>\n
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\nBeyond the race for scientific, commercial and military purposes, there is another space race of a more curious sort. A race to be the first to send various objects up there. But why?\n<\/p>\n
It makes perfect sense that people want to be the first to send something into space. But the choice of objects sent is not always so obvious.<\/p>\n
\nIn December 2024, Buddhist monks from Japan attempted unsuccessfully to send a small temple on board a satellite into orbit. The Kairos rocket did make it more than 110 kilometers from Earth, making it the first time the Dainichi Nyorai (the Buddha of the Cosmos) and the mandala were transported<\/a> into outer space. The monks hope to try again in the future.\n<\/p>\n \nThe space temple is only about the size of a medium Amazon delivery box and covered in protective gold tinted foil. Buddha sits in a special compartment on top. The idea is that, with a growing number of Japanese people living outside of Japan, prayers for departed loved ones could be beamed up to the Buddha as he passes overhead.\n<\/p>\n \nBeing the first matters. Humans appear to have an innate preference for being first, even being more likely to pick the first options in a list<\/a>. It is tempting to explain this by appeal to what the Austrian medical doctor Alfred Adler called the \u201cinferiority complex\u201d\u2014a need to keep proving ourselves<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nYet it may simply be an evolutionary trait of a sort which was genuinely useful in the past but has spilled over into more curious modern preferences, such as expecting more of a firstborn child or voting for the first candidate on the list.\n<\/p>\n \nWhat\u2019s more, through what the biologist Ernst Mayr called the \u201cfounder effect\u201d<\/a>, first movers exercise a disproportionate influence on what happens later on.\n<\/p>\n \nMayr\u2019s original idea was about population genetics and how founders of a population of organisms can restrict later diversity. But the idea has since been applied more broadly to explain why those who arrive or act first tend to have a disproportionate influence on later agents.\n<\/p>\n \nSeen in that light, it makes perfect sense that people want to be the first to send something into space. But the choice of objects sent is not always so obvious. Or rather, there is a sliding scale that runs from understandable to downright odd.\n<\/p>\n Immortality, nostalgia and aliens<\/p>\n \nAt the understandable end of the scale, we have the remains of humans, pets, and even dinosaurs. Not large pieces, just bits of hair or ashes.\n<\/p>\n \nA company called Celestis has been sending ashes and DNA into space since 1994<\/a>. In 1997, it sent the fragmentary cremated remains of 24 people, including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenbery, on what was called the \u201cFounders Flight\u201d. It was the first memorial flight into space.\n<\/p>\n \nFive years later, the remains unintentionally de-orbited<\/a>. Yet even with this accidental burn-up, relatives may feel that their loved ones have achieved an immortality of sorts. After all, they were the first.\n<\/p>\n \nSomething similar applies to pets. A failed launch in January 2024 included more of Gene Roddenberry and partial remains of a dog called Indica-Noodle Fabiano<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nMemorializing the dead in space is particularly popular. Even the Apollo 15 mission left a fallen astronauts memorial plaque<\/a> at Hadley Rille on the Moon in 1971.\n<\/p>\n This reveals a deeper, more emotional reason for why we want to send stuff to space. Coupled with the quest of being first, such items can be proxies for immortality. <\/p>\n \nSimilarly, we have, on several occasions, sent dinosaur bones temporarily into orbit<\/a>. Inclusion of a T. Rex fragment on a 2014 NASA Orion flight was justified \u201cas a reminder of how much life Earth had seen during its existence.\u201d<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \nThis reveals a deeper, more emotional reason for why we want to send stuff to space. Coupled with the quest of being first, such items can be proxies for immortality<\/a>. They can also be born out of nostalgia<\/a>. Why else would we want past life on Earth to leave a continuing trace?\n<\/p>\n \nOther items are harder to understand. In December, a company called beingAI is planning on having a nickel disk delivered to the Moon. The disk will be imprinted with a digital image<\/a> of a trainee AI Buddhist priest called Emi Jido.\n<\/p>\n \nThere aren\u2019t just Buddhist messages in space. For example, the Russian segment of the International Space Station contains all manner of Orthodox religious iconography<\/a>. But what\u2019s the point of having religious messages in space when there\u2019s no one there to read them? This reveals yet another intention: we hope that eventually a message will travel far enough to reach another life form.\n<\/p>\n Making a mark<\/p>\n \nSimilarly, there is little obvious sense in the transmission of Poetica Vaginal, a weak signal of converted vaginal contractions transmitted in the direction of the Eridanis constellation<\/a> by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986. The US Air Force, which was in control of the ground facility, quickly intervened before a stronger transmission could be sent.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd it is frankly odd that an invitation to a performance of Klingon opera<\/a> was sent to Arcturus in the Bo\u00f6tes constellation in 2010, with the invitation written in Klingon (a fictional language from Star Trek). Rather than a representative message from our culture, this came close to cosmic misinformation.\n<\/p>\n \nIn the best-known case of strange objects sent to space, Elon Musk launched his cherry-red Tesla Roadster sports car<\/a> in 2018, complete with a mannequin in the driver\u2019s seat, and David Bowie\u2019s Space Oddity blaring on the car radio. Currently, it is around 248 million kilometers from Earth.\n<\/p>\n \nThese things may reveal yet another reason for why we send stuff to space that is less about immortality, nostalgia, communicating with aliens, or being first. Objects which appear pointless in their own right are still a statement of intent. It is like someone putting a towel on a deckchair that you are not ready to use but will return to later.\n<\/p>\n