It’s remarkable that MIR or ISS hasn’t experienced their first death.
A potentially big problem without Freezers.
Are there any firm plans? Maybe similar to a burial at Sea? Let them float off into space? I guess they’d eventually burn up on reentry like other space debris.
Pack them in ice until a return home can be arranged?
They must have some plan?
The whole of space around them is nearly at absolute zero – much colder than any morgue freezer (those only cool, they don’t freeze).
Two articles that, somewhat, address your question.
From Slate: To Boldly Go Where No Body Has Gone Before: What to do when an astronaut dies in space.
From Business Insider: Here’s what NASA plans to do if an astronaut dies in space
From those two articles, the gist I got is that NASA uses the scenario of an astronaut dying in training exercises, but does not have a formal plan for astronaut remains disposal. Although, why they couldn’t just send the body back in a Soyuz return capsule—with or without pre-shipment exposure to vacuum to desiccate the corpse—I dunno.
The Russians probably have a formal plan, but I don’t see in either article where their space agency was questioned on the topic.
Given that space debris orbiting the Earth is a very serious problem, I would suspect that “burial in space” isn’t the plan – especially because the body would then be orbiting the earth at the same altitude as the ISS, which could lead to more problems down the road.
I would have to believe that there are contingency plans for this, but that they aren’t publicized (because they’re morbid). I would imagine that the plan would be to return the body to Earth, either on one of the Soyuz crew capsules, or on a Dragon cargo vessel. The ISS is also resupplied by Russian Progress vessels, but those burn up on re-entry, leaving the family of the deceased astronaut / cosmonaut with no remains.
I didn’t know that it was that cold in space.
It doesn’t seem to bother astronauts during space walks. Their suits must be well heated.
Other way around, aceplace57: astronauts have to be cooled in their suits, or they’ll die from heat stroke. The human body puts out a LOT of heat, and since space is a vacuum, you can’t get rid of the heat through conduction. It has to radiate away.
The two links provided are very good.
Thank you.
Glad to see I’m not the only one that thought of this problem.
Annnd if you are working in the direct sunlight, that can heat you up very quickly too.
Space is certainly a hazardous work environment.
I have worn one for an extended period of time (on Earth). They aren’t heated because they don’t need to be. Their insulation is about as good as you can get so the inside is going to climb quickly to 98F without supplemental cooling. I had to wear an inner garment with ice packs all over my body before I put one on and I still got really hot after a while.
In space, would not the temp range from horribly freezing to horribly baking depending on if the sun was shining on you or not?
Sun shines on earth, makes it 112 degrees (assume arizona)
It would be hotter, if the earth did not have various things going on to cut down and also disperse the heat right?
So if we hang a guy outside the ship, and the sun is shining on him, wont it simmer his dead body into a stinking mess in short order seeing as he has no atmosphere etc to tame the suns heat?
Also doesnt space make for a poor freezer due to it being a vacuum?
Nothing to provide for convection of heat/cold?
Sun heats stuff in space via radiation not direct transfer of heat, so you can heat a thing up easy enough, but since you cant move temperature from A to B via convection in a vacuum, something heated does not cool off very well?
Not sure if i am saying it right? But it’s the reason you dont need wrapped in 5 layers of R16 Owens Corning in space, but need UV shielding.
I’m posting from a phone now and can’t get fancy with links, but there is an equilibrium temperature for objects in space that depends not only on distance from the sun but also on composition of the object. IIRC, for instance for a small stony meteoroid at the Earth’s distance from the sun, the equilibrium temperature is in the range of zero Fahrenheit, but for an iron one it is above 100 Fahrenheit. But that is for an object always in direct sunlight. For an object in space shaded from the sun, the temperature can drop close to absolute zero even, for instance, on the surface of Mercury. So a dead astronaut would alternate from warming towards somewhere close to normal body temperature on the sunny side of the Earth to heading towards absolute zero every time the station passes into the Earth’s shadow. The whole cycle will repeat every 90 minutes, and I have no idea just how much of a temperature swing takes place over that short timeframe.
I imagine that would tear up remains pretty quick. Maybe they let them decide for themselves? What would it be the resource cost to send them into the sun?
Chris Hadfield describes this in some detail in his book. Basically, it depends on where, when and how the astronaut/Cosmonaut snuffs it. If on a Spacewalk, they will be brought in and stripped of their suit. If during a mission, it depends, if they die near the end then they will be brought back if in the middle part, apparently chucked out of an airlock.
Not really. Every have coffee from a Thermos? The bottle keeps the coffee from cooling off because there is a (weak) vacuum between two layers of the liner. One reason Arizona gets hot is because the air absorbs a lot of heat and carries it around: in space, there is no air (or a very, very thin solar wind) to carry heat around, so all you have to do is put a big umbrella in the way of the sun and anything cold behind the umbrella will stay cold (or, even, get colder from radiating its heat away). Mercury is ridiculously hot during the (long) day but ridiculously cold on the night side.
Bear in mind that the Earth moves in its orbit at around 67 thousand mph: to send something into the sun, you basically have to cancel that speed (accelerate the body in the opposite direction, up to nearly the same speed). Not exactly cheap.
Now that is just plain cool!!!
Can you elaborate?
'Cause, man, I’d just love to apply for a job as a space-suit-tester. 
A Google search revealed that this very question has been asked here before.
I was going to mention Hadfield’s book as well. There’s a passage in it which describes sessions where all interested parties - including his wife - sat around a table and roleplayed his death.
The chapter in question is called “The Power of Negative Thinking”.
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