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What happens if someone dies in space? – Guillermo, Palm Beach, Florida
There’s no question that sending human beings to space is an extraordinarily difficult and perilous proposition.
Since human space exploration began just over 60 years ago, 20 people have died – 14 in the NASA space shuttle tragedies of 1986 and 2003, three cosmonauts during the 1971 Soyuz 11 mission, and three astronauts in the Apollo 1 launch pad fire in 1967.
Given how complicated human spaceflight is, it’s actually remarkable how few people have lost their lives so far. But NASA plans to send a crew to the Moon in 2025 and astronauts to Mars in the next decade. Commercial spaceflight is becoming routine. As space travel becomes more common, so does the possibility that someone might die along the way.
It brings to mind a gloomy but necessary question to ask: If someone dies in space – what happens to the body?
In the future, NASA and other space agencies, along with private industry, hope to establish colonies on Mars.
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Death on the Moon and Mars
As a space medical doctor who works to find new ways to keep astronauts healthy, I and my team at the Translational Research Institute for Space Health want to make sure space explorers are as healthy as they can be for space missions.
Here is how death in space would be handled today: If someone died on a low-Earth-orbit mission – such as aboard the International Space Station – the crew could return the body to Earth in a capsule within a matter of hours.
If it happened on the Moon, the crew could return home with the body in just a few days. NASA already has detailed protocols in place for such events.
Because of that quick return, it’s likely that preservation of the body would not be NASA’s major concern; instead, the No. 1 priority would be making sure the remaining crew returns safely to Earth.
Things would be different if an astronaut died during the 300 million-mile trip to Mars.
In that scenario, the crew probably wouldn’t be able to turn around and go back. Instead, the body would likely return to Earth along with the crew at the end of the mission, which would be a couple of years later.
In the meantime, the crew would presumably preserve the body in a separate chamber or specialized body bag. The steady temperature and humidity inside the space vehicle would theoretically help preserve the body.
But all those scenarios would apply only if someone died in a pressurized environment, like a space station or a spacecraft.
What would happen if someone stepped outside into space without the protection of a spacesuit?
The astronaut would die almost instantly. The loss of pressure and the exposure to the…
