A French bulldog who died suddenly from a brain tumour was given an out–of–this–world send–off, after his ashes were launched 119,000ft into space.
Oscar’s ashes were launched on a weather balloon, alongside his favourite Toy Story alien toy, and a pet GPS tracker.
His owner, Jacob Battersby, 26, from Stockport, and friend Callum King, 26, from Rugby, launched the balloon from Rugby, Warwickshire.
After climbing high into the sky, the balloon burst, scattering Oscar’s ashes – before the package descended by parachute and landed 55 miles away near Nottinghamshire.
‘Oscar couldn’t see the world, so we decided to show the world Oscar,’ Mr King said.
‘Jacob lost Oscar at the start of the year and it came completely out of the blue. He had a brain tumour and it happened so quickly.
‘When we started planning the launch, taking his ashes up there wasn’t really a question. It was just how we were going to do it.
‘It felt like one last adventure for him.’
A French bulldog who died suddenly from a brain tumour was given an out of this world send–off, after his ashes were launched 119,000ft into space
His owner, Jacob Battersby, 26, from Stockport, and friend Callum King, 26, from Rugby, launched the balloon from Rugby, Warwickshire
The pair had expected the journey to last around two hours, but when the balloon stayed airborne far longer than planned, they feared it had been lost forever.
Having abandoned the search, they were stunned when the GPS tracker suddenly pinged, allowing them to recover the package later that evening from a field.
The flight also doubled as a real–world test of the tracker developed by their company, Zoomi, which launched last month, proving it could successfully locate the package after its journey.
Mr King said: ‘We thought we’d lost it. We’d gone to the pub because there was nothing else we could do. Then suddenly the GPS tracker pinged with a location.
‘We drove straight there and ended up walking through fields until we found the payload. It was an amazing feeling.’
Mr King and Mr Battersby first met at Insomnia Gaming Festival in 2016 before later founding Zoomi, a company developing GPS and health trackers for pets.
Before Oscar became ill, Mr Battersby had hoped to travel the world with him, but they never got to go.
Wanting to create a lasting tribute, the pair decided to combine Oscar’s memorial with a weather balloon launch – something Mr King had unsuccessfully attempted while at school years earlier.
Wanting to create a lasting tribute, the pair decided to combine Oscar’s memorial with a weather balloon launch – something Mr King had unsuccessfully attempted while at school years earlier
On May 7, 2026, they launched a helium–filled weather balloon from Rugby carrying cameras recording the entire flight and a Zoomi GPS tracker housed inside a custom–built payload box.
The balloon lifted off at 2.24pm and eventually climbed to around 119,000ft before bursting near the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. The payload touched down shortly after 7pm – 55 miles from the launch site.
Mr King said: ‘I’d done a weather balloon launch years ago at school and we never recovered the payload.
‘It always stayed with me because we’d got all this incredible footage but never knew where it had ended up.
‘So being able to come back years later, build our own payload, send something to the edge of space and recover it ourselves was incredibly satisfying.’
He added: ‘There’s actually a surprising amount of maths involved.
‘We had to calculate the amount of helium, predict where it would travel and build the payload ourselves.
‘We expected it to be in the air for around two hours, so when that time passed we genuinely thought it had gone forever.
After Jane Berwick’s husband, Mark, unexpectedly passed away, she decided to send his ashes into space
Mark’s ashes were loaded into a specially designed capsule, attached to a hydrogen balloon and carried to the edge of space before being gently scattered into the stratosphere, 100,000 feet (32,500 metres) above the ground
‘Finding it proved not only that Oscar had completed his final journey, but that our tracker had done exactly what it was designed to do.’
The pair aren’t the first to blast ashes into space.
In fact, space burials are becoming more and more popular in the UK.
In March, UK–based space burial company, Aura Flights, revealed that it had launched 350 flights since starting in 2017.
Ashes are loaded into a specially designed capsule, attached to a hydrogen balloon and carried to the edge of space before being gently scattered into the stratosphere, 100,000ft (32,500m) above the ground.
However, at £3,950, this process isn’t cheap, and comes on top of the cost of a cremation and funeral.
Samantha Richardson, General Manager of Aura Flights, told the Daily Mail that the company is now receiving more inquiries from people planning for their deaths well in advance, with some potential customers making arrangements while in their 30s and 40s.
She said: ‘In general, people seem to be moving away from traditional burial practices and looking for something a bit more personalised or modern.
‘Instead of being a quiet, sombre event, it’s a celebration of their life, and so they’re looking for something that connects with their personality, their way of life, and the life they lived.’
