TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Colossal Biosciences
Extinction ain't what it used to be. Around one-third of all existing species could vanish due to global warming by 2050 according to the Center for Biological Diversity, but a handful of those already gone—and others on the brink of extinction—are getting a second chance, thanks to Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences. The company announced in March it had genetically engineered mice with the shaggy, golden-brown coat of the woolly mammoth—an initial step in Colossal's stated goal of bringing back the mammoth itself by 2028. In April, Colossal went further with its introduction of three genetically engineered dire wolves, the first representatives of that species to walk the planet in over 10,000 years. Just as important, the company is using similar technology to help protect the red wolf, the Asian elephant, and other species currently clinging to life. 'As I've gotten into the conservation community and…the biotech community, it became abundantly clear that we need new tools and technologies for conservation,' Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm says.
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Time Magazine
5 hours ago
- Time Magazine
TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Colossal Biosciences
Extinction ain't what it used to be. Around one-third of all existing species could vanish due to global warming by 2050 according to the Center for Biological Diversity, but a handful of those already gone—and others on the brink of extinction—are getting a second chance, thanks to Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences. The company announced in March it had genetically engineered mice with the shaggy, golden-brown coat of the woolly mammoth—an initial step in Colossal's stated goal of bringing back the mammoth itself by 2028. In April, Colossal went further with its introduction of three genetically engineered dire wolves, the first representatives of that species to walk the planet in over 10,000 years. Just as important, the company is using similar technology to help protect the red wolf, the Asian elephant, and other species currently clinging to life. 'As I've gotten into the conservation community and…the biotech community, it became abundantly clear that we need new tools and technologies for conservation,' Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm says.
Time Magazine
5 hours ago
- Time Magazine
TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Debut
Organic chemist Joshua Britton honed his elevator pitch while driving for Uber as a side hustle. The idea that the beauty industry is moving away from petroleum to a new era of ingredients made in biotech labs persuaded one of his passengers to give him $100,000 in 2019 as Debut Biotech's first angel investor. 'She told me to get out of the Uber and get my ass into the lab,' CEO Britton says. Today San Diego-based Debut not only has its Deinde line of fossil-fuel-free skincare products, but also a partnership with L'Oreal to replace more than a dozen conventionally sourced ingredients used across the cosmetics giant's product portfolio with its own 'bio identical ingredients.' One example unveiled in February 2025: a synthetic vegan replica of carmine, a red pigment normally derived from beetles and used in various cosmetic products. Creating raw materials in the lab instead of extracting the planet's resources has other applications, too. Debut was awarded $2 million from the U.S. Department of Defense in July 2024 to create plans for a domestic biomanufacturing production facility to reduce the country's reliance on foreign sources of vital chemicals.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
This Texas company has sent remains of sent 'Star Trek' actors, others to space
Since the dawn of humanity, we humans have found countless ways to honor our dead. From traditional burials to the scattering of one's ashes at sea, the methods for the deceased to be honored are as varied as the cultures that comprise our world. But what about those who prefer to be memorialized on a more cosmic scale? Well, it turns out they have that option, too. For about three decades, a company based in Texas has billed itself as the first and most prominent business to offer what's referred to as "space burials." Celestis, which recently conducted a mission from California, offers services that involve sending cremated remains or human DNA beyond Earth's atmosphere. Often, familiar faces and well-known public figures − from "Star Trek" cast members to U.S. presidents − have had their remains flown to orbit as part of a celestial burial or memorial. Many of Celestis' memorial spaceflights have launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Southern California. Here's what to know about Celestis and its memorial spaceflights. Celestis is a company based in Houston, Texas, specializing in transporting human remains to space for cosmic memorials. Capsules containing DNA and human remains are included as payloads on spacecraft launched into orbit from all over the world by other companies, including SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance. Celestis' services allow for families to pay for cremated remains in capsules or DNA to be launched into space, where they can either return intact or remain until they reenter Earth's atmosphere, "harmlessly vaporizing like a shooting star in final tribute," the company says on its website. In another offering, the company facilitates the transportation of memorial capsules to interplanetary space well beyond the moon. Elysium Space, based in San Francisco, California, also offers memorial spaceflights. The company has conducted just three "space burial" missions since 2015, including from Hawaii, California and Florida, according to its website. Celestis' most recent payload of memorial capsules was included in a SpaceX rideshare mission known as Transporter 14. The mission got off the ground Monday, June 23, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. A total of 166 individual Celestis memorial capsules were on board a Nyx spacecraft manufactured by Europe-based The Exploration Company (TEC,) which hitched a ride on SpaceX's famous Falcon 9 rocket. The payload of memorial capsules was part of about 70 total payloads, including small satellites, that the Falcon 9 helped to deliver for paying customers to a sun-synchronous orbit, meaning they matched Earth's rotation around the sun. The launch was meant to be Celestis' first-ever to return from an altitude high enough to be considered Earth's orbit. The Nyx module reached low-Earth orbit, where it traveled for three hours at about 17,000 miles per hour and completed two full orbits around Earth. But instead of safely reentering Earth's atmosphere to land in the Pacific Ocean as planned, the Nyx spacecraft's parachute failed and it crashed into the sea, losing the capsules. If you want to send your deceased loved one on a final cosmic journey, the cost to do so isn't that much different from the price of the average typical funeral or burial service. The cheapest option of sending memorial capsules to space and back, known as "Earth rise," starts at $3,495. The price to send a loved one's remains all the way up to orbit starts at $4,995. After that, though, the costs for Celestis' services start to climb. Both the company's lunar burial and interplanetary services start at $12,995, according to its website. The recent mission was Celestis' 25th overall since it was founded in 1994. The company's maiden voyage took place in April 1997, when a Pegasus rocket carrying the remains of 24 people, including "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, launched over the Spanish Canary Islands. The flight capsules on board a Celestis spacecraft then reentered Earth's atmosphere about a month later. Celestis' first and only successful lunar burial mission to date then occurred a year later in January 1998 from what was then still called the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Conducted at NASA's request, the mission included a capsule on board the agency's Lunar Prospector containing the ashes of geologist Eugene Shoemaker. Celestis has no more missions planned for 2025, according to its website. The next flight, planned for early 2026, appears to be an orbital mission launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida. Reservations are open until Aug. 1, 2025. Celestis previously made headlines in January 2024 when its plans to land human remains on the moon's surface attracted some controversy. The plan was for the remains and DNA of more than 70 deceased people to be included on a lunar lander bound for the moon. That included – once again – remains of Roddenberry, as well as science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Elysium Space also contracted to have cremated human remains and DNA of clients placed aboard the lunar lander. But Navajo Nation, the largest tribe of Native Americans in the United States, vehemently opposed the lunar burial, penning a letter decrying the plans as "a profound desecration." Ultimately, though, the remains never made it to the moon's surface anyway. Pittsburgh-based aerospace company Astrobotic's Peregrine lander fell short of its destination when it began leaking a "critical" amount of propellant – instead burning up in Earth's atmosphere after launch. "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and Arthur C. Clarke, best known for authoring "2001: A Space Odyssey" that inspired Stanley Kubrick's film of the same name, are not the only well-known people whose remains have flown to outer space on a Celestis mission. Among the notable names to have been included are several actors from the original "Star Trek" series and NASA astronauts. Here's a list Celestis provided to the USA TODAY Network: James Doohan, who portrayed Scotty in the original "Star Trek" series (remember the phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty"?) Nichelle Nichols, the first Black woman featured in a major television series who portrayed Nyota Uhura in "Star Trek" DeForest Kelley, who portrayed Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in the original "Star Trek" series Three American presidents, George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, whose DNA in the form of hair samples was included on past flights Several NASA astronauts, including L. Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, and NASA's first Australian-American Astronaut, Philip K. Chapman Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cosmic burials? Company lets you send love one's remains to space
