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Remains of a North Attleboro native who spent years overseeing missile construction, rocketed into suborbital space Saturday with those of a Mercury astronaut and the actor who played Scotty on "Star Trek."

Cremated remains from more than 200 people including North native Arthur De Carufel Jr., Mercury astronaut L. Gordon Cooper - one of the nation's original first seven astronauts - and actor James Doohan - who was better known as "Scotty" on "Star Trek" - parachuted back to Earth five minutes later at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico after launching from a new spaceport in Las Cruces on Saturday morning.

De Carufel's family, and others paid $495 to place a few grams of their relatives' ashes on the Spaceloft XL rocket that launched from Spaceport America.

"I think it's good. He worked there long enough," Jean De Carufel said from her Washington state home, where she watched the launch on CNN with her daughter and her son-in-law.

Arthur De Carufel worked 37 years at Aerojet Corp. in Azusa, Calif., before retiring in 1985, said his daughter, Jeanne Stottlemyer. He was primarily an engineer who oversaw the testing of missile propulsion systems. And he had watched numerous rocket launches.

He and his wife and six children - five sons and a daughter - lived all over the country, including in Florida, when he worked at Cape Canaveral, although they moved before the first manned space flight.

"When we were younger, we used to go and wait for the missiles to go up," Stottlemyer said.

De Carufel died on April 19, 2006, about a month after having a stroke, she said.

Sending his remains into space was his wife's idea.

Jean De Carufel said she had saved an article in which Deke Slayton, also one of the original Mercury astronauts, mentioned such a concept.

She mentioned it to her husband before he died.

He said, 'I'll go if you'll go with me,' " she recalled. They will do that when she dies, she said.

Space was a long way from Arthur De Carufel's roots.

He grew up in North Attleboro and graduated from North Attleboro High School. He never forgot his home, although his trips back became less frequent in recent years. His sister, Rita Fitzpatrick, lives in Dighton.

"He would talk about going to the pond with all of his buddies, and the snow," Stottlemyer said. "Always good things. But he was eager to get away from the weather."

De Carufel attended the Rhode Island School of Jewelry Design, and then enlisted in the Marines. His training included aviation ordnance school, aerial gunnery school and radio and radar operator school. His active duty was primarily with Marine Torpedo Bomber Squadron 131 in the South and Central Pacific theaters as an airborne radio operator/gunner.

He met his future wife in 1944. They married in May 1945.

After two years as a stained-glass cutter and setter, he was hired by Aerojet as a process operator, fabricating igniters and jet-assisted take off units.

He climbed the corporate ladder over the next three decades to become a supervisor.

"That was his whole career, getting these rockets up," Stottlemyer said.

Jean De Carufel said "I even have a missile with my name on it, when it went up from Fort Churchill" in Canada.

Jean will soon get a plaque with her husband's ashes to commemorate his going into space on Saturday.

The De Carufels' son Jim, and daughter-in-law Dee, watched the launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

"They said it was fantastic. They said they were very, very impressed with it," Mrs. De Carufel said.

"I think if Scotty wasn't going, and Cooper, there wouldn't have been as quite a thing on TV."

MICHAEL GELBWASSER can be reached at 508-236-0372 or at mgelbwasser@thesunchronicle.com.