Ever Wondered What NASA Does When An Astronaut Dies In Space? Heres The Answer

1 NASA

Even just a couple hundred years back, who would have thought that humankind would have been able to travel to space and even the moon? Everyone would have considered it a joke, but today that has become a reality. In fact, traveling to space nowadays has become a trivial task.

NASA is the most popular space organization in the world at the moment.

2 The Questions

Although there are several questions in people’s minds regarding space, one of the most common questions is what happens when an astronaut dies in space? What does NASA do to his or her body? Finally, we have been able to find the answer to that question. Before knowing the answer, you need to know a few important facts.

3 Important Facts

The main thing is that this situation has never happened before till now, so keep in mind that whatever is being discussed is entirely hypothetical. Let’s look at the essential facts.

• Keeping the dead body in a locker isn’t a good idea, since other crew members will be emotionally stressed.
• Cemetery in space is simply not a feasible solution because constructing one would require an investment of a few million dollars. Because MASA’s budget has been reduced currently, this is just not possible. After a person is dead, the chances are that before the next shuttle arrives, that body would probably have decomposed and most of it would be destroyed.
• Another possible solution is just to release the body in space. But obviously, no one will support this since this is completely immoral. Also, there are certain laws which prohibit this from happening. According to international space laws, garbage can't be dumped during orbit, since that garbage can damage other satellites or even the spacecraft as well, putting the lives of other astronauts in danger.

4 The Conclusion

One technique called “Body Back” is nowadays used. In this process, the body is put in a bag, then frozen (that is quite easy in space), and then after the freezing process is complete, it is vibrated which completely transforms it into the fine powder. Although the process is quite fast and doesn’t cost a lot, it is quite sad to imagine that the dead body of an astronaut has to go through this process.

Hopefully, a better process will be invented in future.