Jump directly to the content

What happens if you die in space – including when you’re preserved or thrown into abyss

IF you have enough money, the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos want to take you on a trip to space.

The prospect of space tourism is exciting but it's also raising a lot of legal and moral questions about what happens when things go wrong.

Space tourism and longer space travel could result in more space deaths
Space tourism and longer space travel could result in more space deathsCredit: Getty

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Bezos's Blue Origin are just two companies offering space flights to celebrities and civilians.

Elon Musk's SpaceX also took a group of civilians to space last year.

Space may be becoming more accessible but the accessibility means people no longer need to go through the same rigorous training and medical checklist that astronauts have to.

Space agencies are also hoping to send astronauts on much longer space missions than we've ever seen before.

One of the main issues this raises is what happens if someone dies in space?

Most read in Tech

Real-life Fox Mulder says Roswell wreck could lift lid on UFO secrets


How many people have died in space?

Space is dangerous for many reasons but only around 30 astronauts and cosmonauts have died while attempting space missions.

Seven astronauts died when Nasa's Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after launch in 1986.

A further seven astronauts died when Nasa's Columbia shuttle broke up when it returned to Earth in 2003.

These tragic events were shocking and killed all crew on board.

No spaceflight has been able to teach us what would happen if one crew member dies during a mission while everyone else is alive and fit enough to continue.

What would happen if you die in space?

International space law dictates that individual countries are responsible for allowing and supervising national space activities.

If someone were to die during a space tourism flight, it could land the specific company in a lot of legal trouble and an investigation into duty of care.

Legal concerns would be the least of the crews worries though as they'd need to work out what to do with the body.

If it's a short spaceflight, it would be easy enough to store the body and bring it back to Earth.

According to space experts Christopher Newman and Nick Caplan, the body would need to be kept cool to prevent decomposition and stored somewhere that wouldn't contaminate the other crew members.

More problems arise for longer missions.

The experts wrote in The Conversation that they think a dead body on a year long trip to Mars would need to be frozen, perhaps towards the outside of the spacecraft, in order to bring it back to Earth safely.

This could also reduce a dead bodies weight and save space in the craft.

The space researchers also suggest that as we colonize space, bodies may have to be disposed of rather than preserved.

Burials would contaminate planets but catapulting bodies into the abyss of space would lead to moral and space debris issues.

As we edge closer to a new age of space exploration, technology for storing or disposing of human bodies is something space agencies will have to look into.

Find out more about science


  • When is the next Full Moon?
  • What is a Super Moon?
  • What is SpaceX?
  • Where is the edge of space?
  • How many bones are in the human body?
  • How many chromosomes do humans have?
  • What causes a volcano to erupt?
  • Which sharks attack the most humans?
  • What are the conspiracy theories about the world ending?
  • All the UFO sightings and whether aliens are real
  • Which country has the most earthquakes?

In other news, Nasa's Curiosity rover has discovered a strange rock on Mars that looks just like a flower or a piece of coral here on Earth.

The US space agency revealed a stunning image of an unusual 'space triangle' it was able to capture with the Hubble Space Telescope.

And, astronomers have observed a red giant star dying in real-time for the first time ever.

We pay for your stories!

Do you have a story for The US Sun team?

