Do you read me, HAL?

Here’s what NASA plans to do if an astronaut dies in space

President Nixon was prepared for Neil Armstrong and the other Apollo 11 astronauts to die on the moon in 1969. Written in an old memo titled “In Event of Moon Disaster” is Nixon’s backup speech for the media in case something went horribly wrong during the moon landing.

It begins with this poignant statement: “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.”

Thankfully, Nixon didn’t need it.

But now, for the first time since the Apollo missions, there is serious talk of more manned spaceflight missions, and it is raising an important question: When someone dies in space, what do you do with the body?

Even though there is no official protocol, astronauts do some practice for this worst-case scenario.

In his book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, astronaut Chris Hadfield explains a chilling training exercise called a ‘death sim’. It’s designed to help prepare astronauts for what they should do in the event of the death of one of their colleagues.

Death sims usually operate as a roundtable discussion in which one astronaut is announced as having died and whoever is leading the exercise will throw curveballs into the hypothetical scenario that plays out. In his book, Hadfield explains what it was like listening to his own death sim played out:

“We’ve just received word from the Station: Chris is dead.” Immediately, people start working the problem. Okay, what are we going to do with his corpse? There are no body bags on Station, so should we shove it in a spacesuit and stick it in a locker? But what about the smell? Should we send it back to Earth on a resupply ship and let it burn up with the rest of the garbage on re-entry? Jettison it during a spacewalk and let it float away into space?

​The death sims force the astronauts to really think through how they should respond, Hadfield writes: “Who should tell my parents their son is dead? By phone or in person? Where will they even be - at the farm or at the cottage? Do we need two plans, then, depending on where my mom and dad are?”

This is a start, but it gets trickier to deal with death on a long-term mission.

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