What would happen if someone died in space? This is a question you may have asked yourself at some point, especially if you’re a fan of sci-fi movies like Interstellar or Gravity. Well, it turns out that NASA is working on a protocol for this type of situation, and it’s not pretty.
For such an eventuality (only 20 people have died outside the Earth to date), NASA still has no contingency plan, but is working on a procedure called “Body Back“, whereby the astronaut’s body would be placed in a special bag and placed in a cold room.
There, the body would undergo a freeze-drying process, i.e., it would be frozen and the water would be removed by sublimation. In this way, the body would be reduced to a dry and light powder, which could be easily stored or transported.
This method is known as “promation“, and was developed by Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak as an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation or burial, thus respecting the dignity of the deceased and avoiding contamination of the soil or atmosphere.
However, the Body Back protocol would only apply if the astronaut died inside a spacecraft or orbital station. If the astronaut died outside the spacecraft, for example during a spacewalk, the situation would be more complicated. In that case, NASA has no clear solution, and it would depend on the circumstances and the decisions of the mission partners.
One option would be to leave the corpse floating in space, where it would become part of the hundreds of celestial bodies (never better said) that surround the planet. Another option would be to try to recover the body and bring it back to Earth. But both options involve technical and ethical risks, as well as a high economic cost.
Therefore, some experts suggest that it would be best to incinerate the body with a plasma propellant, a device that generates a jet of ionized gas at high temperature. This would prevent the body from decomposing and releasing harmful substances into space.
Be that as it may, the fact is that no one has yet died in the space vacuum, at least not officially. For this reason, let’s hope that this type of situation will never happen, and that space travel will become safer and safer.
Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.
