A dog’s ashes were launched 119,000 feet and scattered in space.
Oscar, a six-year-old French bulldog who died suddenly from a brain tumor earlier this year, has been given one final adventure after his ashes were sent to the edge of the atmosphere in a weather balloon.
His favorite Toy Story alien plush and a pet GPS tracker traveled to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere in a weather balloon tribute on May 7, 2026.
His owner, Jacob Battersby, 26, from Stockport, and friend Callum King, 26, from Rugby, launched the balloon from Rugby, Warwickshire.
After climbing to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, where temperatures dropped to -72 degrees Celsius (-97.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the balloon burst, scattering Oscar’s ashes before the package descended by parachute and landed 55 miles away near Nottinghamshire.
Callum, an entrepreneur, said: “Oscar couldn’t see the world, so we decided to show the world Oscar.
“Jacob lost Oscar at the start of the year and it came completely out of the blue. He had a brain tumor 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.”
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 and headed to a pub to drown their sorrows, 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.
Callum 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.”
Jacob and Callum 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, Jacob 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 Callum 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 2:24 p.m. and eventually climbed to around 119,000 feet before bursting near the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. The payload touched down shortly after 7 p.m. – 55 miles from the launch site.
Callum told Sell Us Your Story: “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 math 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.
“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.”
Speaking about why they wanted to share the story, Callum said: “We never did this for money or publicity.
“We just wanted to give Oscar one last adventure and create a lasting memory.
“Jacob’s other dog, Toby, has recently been diagnosed with cancer as well, so it really reminds you how precious every moment with your pets is.”
Jacob, a content creator, said: “It’s really special. They say after about six months, his ashes will eventually return to Earth as rain.
“I really like the idea that a little part of him is still up there.
“People always look up at the sky when they’re thinking about loved ones they’ve lost. And mine is actually up there.
“And when I go away with Toby, I like to think that Oscar can see us.”
Jacob said he was keen to take his other French bulldog, Toby, on the adventures he didn’t get to do with Oscar.
He said: “Our other French bulldog, Toby, was diagnosed with cancer just a couple of weeks ago.
“I’ve probably got a year with her so I’d definitely like to plan things. We’re going away in September hopefully, and she loved the Dolomites.
“We’d love to take her paragliding, it’s probably the closest she’ll ever get to space, and to Oscar.
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