Scotty's ashes still missing

A search team continues to look for a rocket carrying ashes of the actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on Star Trek, almost two weeks after it hurtled to the edge of space from New Mexico, the company behind the launch said.

Remains of the Canadian-born actor, who died two years ago at the age of 85, blasted off from a remote launch site on April 29 carrying a payload that included the ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper and several experiments.

A spokeswoman for Houston-based Space Services, which organised the "memorial spaceflight," said the telephone-pole sized rocket descended by parachute into a rugged area that a search team has repeatedly failed to reach.

"The terrain is very mountainous; it's not somewhere that you can walk or drive to. My understanding is that it will take some time to get up into there," Susan Schonfeld told Reuters by telephone.

"They know the general location, and we have the utmost confidence that they will recover it."

Schonfeld said the search had been hampered by "horrendous" weather in the desert state, but expected the Up Aerospace Spaceloft XL craft to be recovered in coming days.