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Since Yuri Gagarin boarded a rocket and flew into space 60 years ago, about 21 lives have been lost in space, but as space agencies prepare for the first human mission to Mars, many believe that the death toll will rise significantly.
Astronauts traveling to Mars will spend at least seven months in a capsule on a route completed so far by humans and, if they survive the trip to Mars, will face the harsh climate of the red plane, among other serious problems leading to death , such as starvation and suffocation.
When a crew member dies, it can take months or even years for a body to be returned to Earth, if at all, which raises a not-so-trivial question about what happens to a person’s body when it dies in space. .
According to a Popular Science report, experts have proposed a number of options for burying a body on Mars, including “throwing” it into the dark abyss or burying it in the soil of the Red Planet, but the remains should first be burned to avoid contaminating the surface.
However, in the worst case, space explorers could run out of food and the only edible thing is the body of a fallen crew member. Experts are studying what happened in 1972 when a plane with a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes, which sounds awful. The surviving passengers had no food and no means of communication with the outside world while stranded on a mountain, so they made the difficult decision to eat those who had died when the plane landed to survive.
© AP Photo / NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
This image provided by NASA, assembled from a series of photos from January 2018 taken by the Mars Curiosity rover, shows an upward view of Mount Sharp, on which Curiosity climbed.
“There are two types of approaches. One says that although we owe the body an enormous amount of respect, life is primary, and if the only way we could survive would be to eat a body, it is acceptable, but not desirable, “Bioethicist Paul Wolpe is quoted in report discussing the potential cannibalism among those living on Mars.
According to the report, which cites experts, if the mission’s food supply were interrupted, astronauts would quickly run out of options.
However, no space agency has yet issued an official position on cannibalism on Mars. NASA does not mention in its protocols the sudden death of astronauts and neither the protocol for manipulating their bodies, nor the instructions of other international space agencies provide for this.
While NASA does not have defined procedures for dealing with death in space, researchers around the world have worked to find a respectful way to eliminate a fallen astronaut.
© NASA
The first people on Mars (Artist’s concept)
There are several other probable methods of removing a corpse into space. Freezing drying, for example, in space differs from Earth in that the body would be kept outside the spacecraft, in a cold vacuum, where it would be covered by ice.
If a crew member dies on the voyage of about half a year on Mars, the body can be frozen or stored in the cold before the boat lands.
If it is not possible to keep it cool, the survivors could transfer their deceased colleague into space. It can be seen as the simplest alternative, as the body would remain locked in the direction of the ship and would remain exactly where it was released. But if more missions opt for this approach, future spacecraft on Mars will fly through a sea of bodies.
According to scientific studies, the Red Planet is exposed 700 times to the radiation encountered on Earth. Radiation can damage the heart, strengthen and narrow the arteries, or remove some of the cells in the lining of blood vessels, all of which can lead to cardiovascular disease and possibly death.
In this situation, a Martian burial would be necessary, but NASA has strict rules against the contamination of other planets with microbes on Earth.
“As for the removal of organic matter (including bodies) on Mars,” said Catherine Conley, NASA’s planetary protection official, “we don’t impose restrictions as long as all the microbes on Earth have been killed – so incineration would be necessary.” . Although planetary protection requires documentation of elimination, to ensure that future missions are not caught. ”
Wolpe, on the other hand, believes that humanity will be able to adapt to the harsh realities of posthumous treatment in space. We recognize that explorers on Earth face the prospect of less-than-ideal burials if they perish on the ground. After all, Mount Everest, according to Wolpe, is an excellent terrestrial model for possible missions to Mars, because when humans die, their bodies simply remain there forever.