What do we need to do to dispose of the body of someone who died on a space mission? Is it a good idea to float the body in space? What difficulties will arise in the process of manipulating the body?
In 50 years of space exploration, the world has recorded the sacrifices of a total of 18 astronauts for various reasons.
However, with plans to organize space tours or plans to send humans to Mars, there’s a good chance we’ll see more deaths in space. In fact, dealing with someone’s death in space is just as important as securing the life of the astronaut.
NASA scientists themselves consider this a process to be completed, as the storage of corpses inside the spacecraft will have a physical and mental impact on the crew.
Before you dive into what to do with an astronaut’s body in space, find out what happens if someone dies in a location without gravity or atmospheric pressure.
An astronaut, called her Dr. Lisa, is outside the space station doing routine maintenance work. Suddenly, a small asteroid came out of nowhere, piercing Lisa’s white travel suit, leaving a fairly large hole.
Unlike anything you’ve seen or read in science fiction, Lisa’s eyes won’t … get out of her skull until her whole body crumbles into a pool of blood and ice. In fact, such a dramatic story would not have happened. But Lisa must act quickly after puncturing the suit, as she will pass out in 9-11 seconds. Let’s say 10 seconds. She has 10 seconds to immerse herself in a pressurized environment. But the pressure drop too quickly as soon as the accident happened would most likely shock Lisa, and death would have struck the unfortunate female doctor before she even knew what was happening to her.
Most of the conditions causing Lisa’s death stem from a lack of atmospheric pressure in space. The human body is used to functioning under the weight of the earth’s atmosphere, which always protects us like a giant tender blanket. As soon as the pressure goes away, the gas in Lisa’s body will start to expand and the liquids will turn into gas. The water in her muscles would turn to vapor, settling under the skin, causing many parts of her body to swell twice their normal size, like little girl Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but it wasn’t not the most serious. survival problem. The lack of pressure also causes gas bubbles to form in the nitrogen gas in the blood, causing extreme pain, similar to the experience of diving in the high seas under pressure. When Dr. Lisa passes out for about 9-11 seconds, she goes into a coma, feeling nothing, continuing to float and float in space.
After she passed the minute and a half, Lisa’s heart rate and blood pressure would drop to the point where her blood could start to boil. The pressure inside and outside of his lungs would become so different that his lungs were torn and bleeding. Without immediate support, Dr. Lisa will officially suffocate and die. Remember, this is exactly what scientists think is going to happen. With so little information, we get studies conducted in pressure chambers under the Earth, on less fortunate humans and even less on less fortunate animals.
The crew have now brought Lisa inside, but it was too late to save her. Rest in peace, Dr. Lisa.
What to do with Dr. Lisa’s body?
Space programs like NASA have obviously noticed this inevitable problem, they just don’t publicly mention it (anyone wondering why they are hiding exam processing in your space?). The question here is: Should Lisa’s body be brought back to Earth? Here is what will happen, at your discretion.
Yes, please bring her back to Earth
Decay can be slowed down in cold weather, so if Lisa is brought back to Earth (and the crew doesn’t want leaks from a decaying body to invade the living area of the ship), they need to keep her as cool as possible. . On the ISS, astronauts keep trash and leftovers in the cooler part of the station to prevent rotting bacteria, reduce the rate of food rotting, and help astronauts avoid unpleasant odors. Maybe this will be where Lisa will be until the spaceship brings her back to Earth. Certainly no one wants to keep Dr. Lisa with the garbage, but the space station has a limited number of rooms and the garbage area already has an efficient refrigeration system installed, so it probably does.
What if Dr. Lisa died of a heart attack on a long trip to Mars? In 2005, NASA partnered with a small Swiss company, Promessa, to design a prototype system for processing and storing corpses in space. This prototype is called the Body Back (meaning “Bring back the corpse”).
If Lisa’s crew have the Body Back system on board, then it works as follows. Her body is placed in an airtight bag made from GoreTex and pushed into the ship’s airlock area. In this area, the temperature of space (-270 degrees C) would freeze Lisa’s body. After about an hour, a robotic arm will pull the body bag back inside the ship and vibrate it for 15 minutes, causing Lisa’s body to collapse into small pieces. The flakes will be dehydrated and what is left in Body Back is only about 22 kg of dry powder. In theory, you could store Lisa in this powder for years before you send her back to Earth and return it to her family as if she were handing her a very heavy urn.
No Lisa should stay in space
Why do we have to bring Lisa’s body back to Earth? Many are willing to pay up to $ 12,000 or more just to have a tiny fraction of their ashes or DNA launched into Earth orbit, onto the surface of the Moon, or into large space. How interesting do you think space researchers would be if they had the chance to float their lifeless bodies in space?
After all, submarine burial has long been considered a solemn ritual to see sailors and explorers: their bodies were dropped from the ship towards the great waves below. Today, we continue this practice despite advancements in freezing systems and on-board storage technology. So even though we have the technology to build robotic arms to turn bodies into powder, maybe we should try a simpler approach: put Dr. Lisa in a pocket, let her glide proudly in the sun, then drift in. space?
The universe is endless and uncontrollable. We want to believe that Dr. Lisa will forever drift in a large space, but there is a greater possibility that she will drift in the same orbit as the ship. It will unintentionally turn her into some sort of … cosmic trash. The United Nations has regulations that prohibit dumping garbage into space. But maybe no one will apply these rules to Dr. Lisa, no one wants to call our trash hero!
Humans have faced this challenge before and the results are … frightening. There are only a few routes that can be climbed to the top of Mount Everest (8,848 m above sea level). If you died at this height (around 300 people have already done so!), Any attempt to bring your body down the mountain for a burial or cremation would be extremely dangerous. Bodies now flood the mountain roads, and each year new explorers walk past the fluffy orange corpses and bare faces of their predecessors. The same can happen in space, where ships on Mars can later fly over orbiting floaters again!
It is possible that the gravity of a certain planet is pulling Lisa down. If that happens, you will get free atmospheric cremation. The friction of the atmosphere would burn the tissues in her body, causing her to burn. There is also a possibility, very, very small, if Lisa’s body is sent into space in a small self-propelled escape compartment, it will fly out of our solar system, passing through. Void space to a few exoplanets, survived passing a possible atmosphere to another planet, and ruptured on impact, causing Lisa’s cells and bacteria to irradiate, creating new life on a new planet. How can we be sure that life on Earth was not born out of such a situation, right?
Will the remains of astronauts become a source of life on other planets?
We know that there are no microorganisms in space, so the remains of astronauts will not be broken down by bacteria even after tens of millions of years and can retain their original shape. origin.
Astronaut remains carry a large amount of organic matter, these organic substances contain amino acids, … and amino acids are one of the important substances that make up life.
But amino acids alone cannot form life. Amino acids are the equivalent of bricks and life is the equivalent of a building. The more complex life, the more complex the work of this building. Bricks cannot form a building on their own, so if an astronaut’s remains float on another planet, they won’t necessarily form life.
If an astronaut’s remains fall into the ocean and there is a hydrothermal crater at the bottom of the ocean, that astronaut’s remains could form life. Indeed, hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean will continue to emit energy. Too great a difference in concentrations between the parts will promote the synthesis of ATP (the name of the enzyme has a key role in almost all living organisms), thus leading to the formation of life.
