If you weren’t around for my Cohost days, you might not know about my PDF hobby. I collect boring bureaucratic documents about unusual or morbid situations. I’m fascinated by the way institutional writers try to project control and objectivity in the face of horror and absurdity. It started out with police reports, then I branched out to NTSB incident reports, and now I have a collection of thousands of PDFs, PPTs, and DOCs about topics ranging from a man who got a live fish stuck in his throat to satanic-panic guidebooks telling police how to detect witches. (There are multiple anti-witch police PDFs. The 80s sure was a time.)

---

So today we’re going to find out what NASA’s plan is when an astronaut dies in space! These plans have never been used – every fatal incident during spaceflight has killed the entire crew – but they had to be made. As Operational Considerations For Death In Space points out, the International Space Station doesn’t have a refrigerator big enough for a body, and throwing someone out the airlock (more sensitively referred to as “‘Burial at Sea’ via Extra-Vehicular Activity”) creates a hazard that the body will smash into (“recontact”) the station on a later orbit.

The first solution considered is putting the body in a spacesuit, but “Many gaseous products of decomposition have a higher vapor pressure than the gasses the suits are designed to contain, may not actually be sufficient to the task.” So that’s out. For similar reasons, a standard body bag isn’t suitable for storing a body more than a day or two without refrigeration.

The “legacy solution” since 2012 is an HRCU (Human Remains Containment Unit) which is basically a big plastic bag with a charcoal filter to allow venting but capture odors. However, the filter does not work when it gets wet and cannot be changed. So that’s not ideal. Also the bag has an absorbent lining underneath the body, but “underneath” is not a useful concept in microgravity.

So the new solution proposed in this presentation is a modification of body bags designed to contain bodies contaminated with agents of chemical or biological warfare. These have absorbent lining the whole way around, securement straps, a velcro panel to attach a national flag, and a filter port designed to make it “Easier for surviving crewmembers to ‘burp’ bag in the event of pressure buildup.”

The new bags were tested on three cadavers, which were kept in different HRCU models until they “experienced chemical breakthrough,” after which the bagged cadavers were secured in a plywood mockup of a Soyuz seat (image shows a live person demonstrating the position) and dropped from a crane.

The good news is, the chemical-rated HRCU didn’t leak any decomposition gasses for 43 days, even after impact testing! The bad news is, “it was noted that some of the liquid products of decomposition had begun to seep through the outer shell of the HRCU.” The author says this might only happen at Earth gravity so let’s not worry about it, and declares the HRCU “sufficient for any mission conducted within the cislunar system.”

Death in Space Protocol Considerations, presented at the same conference, discusses what to do with a body on a Moon or Mars mission, and is less confident in its tone. It’s more interested in asking questions, like: “Depending on timing of rigor mortis, would the body fit through the hatch[?]”, “Will burial on the lunar or Martian surface be a possibility?” and noting issues like “Human remains in the vehicle would induce stress.”

(When I was a new EMT, I once left a body for the funeral home with the upper part of the body propped up in a half-sitting position, because I thought it looked more dignified than lying flat, and… I forgot that rigor mortis is a thing. There were phone calls. I’m very sorry and won’t do it again.)

The presentation ends with two “novel methods for remains disposition” that produce usable fertilizer, in case a lunar or Mars colony doesn’t want to throw out all that precious nitrogen and phosphorus. I see where they’re coming from but suspect this will not be popular.

Policy for the Handling of Mortality Related to NASA Human Spaceflight Operations is pretty dry and mostly concerned with various acronym agencies’ protocols for consulting other acronym agencies, but does include provisions for a murder in space (consult even more acronym agencies). It also notes that burying a body on Mars creates a risk of microbial contamination and must be coordinated with the Planetary Protection Officer–if we find bacteria on Mars, we don’t want to be uncertain if they’re actually Martian, and we really don’t want to find out that there were Martian microbes but they couldn’t compete with invasive Earth species.

Mortality Related to Human Spaceflight has a few more interesting details. It gives the ISS timeline for dealing with a body, which includes collection of forensic samples – astronauts are asked to collect hair, nail clippings, urine, blood, and vitreous humor (eyeball fluid) from their deceased crewmate – and something called “abdominal decompression” before the HRCU is sealed, which I could not find more details on. This technical brief also mentions the need for “prevention of satellite imagery of the remains, which can be protected with a shroud or covering.”

While pushing a body out the airlock is not a good idea for Earth orbit, the document proposes that bodies on longer-range missions could be launched onto a deep space trajectory, or “solar injection.” (My extensive study of orbital mechanics suggests that this would require an impractical amount of fuel, but maybe NASA could develop a mortuary railgun or something.) A simpler solution would be to jettison the bodies on a deorbit trajectory towards any planet with an atmosphere, letting the re-entry forces cremate them and scatter the ashes.

None of these plans have ever been needed, but people have died in space, and there is a memorial to them, one of the few pieces of art on the Moon. (But probably not the only – there is also Moon Museum, covertly smuggled onto Apollo 12 and including a crude drawing of a penis by Andy Warhol.) Along with a plaque, Fallen Astronaut was placed by Apollo 15 on the Hadley Rille. It’s very small, because of weight and space constraints, and very simple, because NASA did not want it to have an identifiable gender or nationality. It’s still up there on the Moon and probably will be for billions of years, a forlorn little thing, having traveled so far just to be laid down in the dirt.

Also the guy who designed the sculpture got in trouble for trying to sell signed replicas for $750 apiece.