In 2012, NASA sneaked a morgue in orbit.
No press statement. There is no fanfare. Only a sealed bag of soft sides hidden in a cargo shipment to the International Space Station (ISS) along with lyophilized meals and scientific equipment. Officially, the human remains containment unit (HRCU) was called. For the not trained eye, it looked like a shipping bag for frozen load. But for NASA it marked something much more sobering: a great advance to prepare for death beyond the earth.
When I was a child, I became obsessed with how astronauts went to the bathroom in zero gravity. Now, decades later, as a forensic pathologist and perennial applicant of NASA’s body of astronauts, I find myself obsessed with a darker and more disturbing question:
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What would happen if an astronaut died around? Would they be brought home, or would they be left behind? If they expired in another world, would that be their final resting place? If they died in a spacecraft or a space station, would your remains be launched to orbit, or would they be sent on an interstellar vacuum exhaust trip?
It turns out that NASA has begun to solve most of these answers. And none too soon. Because the question itself is no longer Yeah Someone will die in space, but when.
A cisno body
No astronaut has died from natural causes outside the world. In 1971 the crew of three men from the Soviet Soyuz 11 mission suffocated in space When his spacecraft spared shortly before his automated atmospheric re -entry, but his deaths were only discovered once the spacecraft landed on earth. Similarly, every fatality of the United States spatial flight to date has occurred within the atmosphere of the Earth: under gravity, oxygen and a clear national jurisdiction. That matters, because it means that each mortality of space flights has developed in a family territory.
But the planned missions are becoming longer, with destinations beyond the orbit of the Low Earth. And NASA’s body of astronauts is getting old. The average age now floats around 50, an age group where natural death becomes statistically relevant, even for physical conditioning benefits. Death in space is no longer a mental experiment. It is a probability curve, and NASA knows.
In response, the agency is making subtle but decisive movements. The most recent Astronaut Selection Cycle was extended“Not only to boost intake, but also to attract younger crew members capable of handling future long -term missions.”
POT‘S space morgue
If someone died aboard the ISS today, their body would be placed in the HRCU, which would later be sealed and insured in an area not pressure to expect an eventual return to the earth.
The HRCU itself is A modified version of a military body bag designed to store human remains in dangerous environments. It is integrated with the cooling systems already aboard the ISS for a slow decomposition and includes control filters and moisture absorbent coatings, as well as inverted zippers for respectful access to the head. There are straps to secure the body in a seat to return, and patches for name labels and national flags.
The corpse tests carried out in 2019 at Sam Houston State University have shown that the system is durable. Some versions held for more than 40 days before the decomposition violated the barrier. NASA even tested the 19 -foot bag to simulate a hard landing.
But it has never been used in space. And since no one knows how a body breaks down in the true microgravity (or, in the case, on the moon), no one can say if the HRCU would preserve the tissue well enough for a forensic autopsy.
This is a worrying knowledge gap, because in space, a death is not just a tragic loss, it is also a vital data. It was the disappearance of an astronaut of a chance of his physiology, or an inevitable blow of cosmic bad luck, or was it a consequence of failures in the innumerable systems of a spatial habitat that can be found and fixed? Future lives may depend on understanding what went wrong, through adequate postmortem investigation.
But there is no forensic doctor in orbit. Then, NASA trains its crews in something called Forensic Sample Collection Protocol in the mission. Astronauts of the space agency can avoid talking about it, but everyone has it memorized: documenting everything, ideally with the real -time orientation of NASA’s flight surgeons. Photograph the body. Collect vitreous blood and liquid, as well as hair and tissue samples. Only then can the remains be saved in the HRCU.
NASA has also prepared for death outside the station, on space walks, the moon or deep space missions. If a crew member perishes in a vacuum but their remains are recovered, the body is wrapped in a specially designed space cover.
The objective is not just a technical issue of preventing pollution. It is also psychological as a way of preserving dignity. Of all the “first”, any space agency hopes to achieve, the first human body that is derived in the framework in a satellite food is not among them.
If a burial must occur, in the lunar regolite or by the solar orbit, the body will be tracked and obediently cataloged, forever treated as a sacred artifact of the history of space.
Such gestures are also relevant to NASA’s plans for duel outside the world; Pain and commemorative protocols are now part of the official crew training. If a death occurs, surviving astronauts have the task of celebrating a simple ceremony to honor the fallen, then continue with their mission.
Unknown kingdoms
So far we have only covered the “easy” questions. NASA and others are still dealing with the toughest.
Consider the question of authority about death and mortal remains. In the ISS, it is simple: the country of origin of the deceased astronaut retains the jurisdiction. But that clarity fades as the destinations become more distant and the most diverse trips: what really happens in the missions of space agency to the moon or Mars? How could the rules for commercial or multinational spatial flights change, or, for the case, private spatial stations and interplanetary settlements that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other technology billions?
NASA and its partners have begun to write Marcos, such as Artemis agreements—Crees signed by more than 50 nations to govern behavior in space. But even those do not address many intimate details of death.
What happens, for example, if a dirty game is suspected?
THE EXTERNAL SPACE TREATYA legal document written in 1967 under the United Nations, which is the fundamental set of humanity rules for orbit and beyond, does not say.
Of course, not everything can be planned in advance. And NASA has done an extraordinary job by keeping astronauts alive in orbit. But as more people venture in space, already measure that the border extends to longer trips and destinations further, it becomes a statistical certainty that sooner or later someone will not return home.
When that happens, it will not be just a tragedy. It will be a test. A proof of our systems, our ethics and our ability to adapt to a new mortality dimension. For some, NASA preparations for astronautical death may seem simply morbid, even silly, but that could not be further from the truth.
The space will not care, of course, when it claims more lives. But we will. And arise on that gloomy occasion with reverence, rigor and grace will define not only politics in the great beyond, but what it means to be human there too.
#NASA #ready #death #space
