TECH NEWS: IT, TECHNOLOGY - Swedish burial techniques studying NASA

Tuesday, 22 May 2012 03:36

Swedish burial techniques studying NASA

To think of NASA's illustrators a base on Mars.

Swedish Promessa Organics technology to lyophilization dead bodies will be NASA's options for the dangerous manned expeditions to Mars.

- The astronauts themselves do not mind being left in space, but the families want a body to bury, "said Susanne Wiigh Mäsak, Promessa founder and innovator behind the technology.

- Nowadays it is forbidden to leave the materials in space, and in particular organic matter, "says Susanne Wiigh Mäsak.

NASA plans to send a manned craft to Mars sometime in the 2030s. Five astronauts will spend five years in a small capsule on one of the riskiest missions of the modern man taken by them.

The risk of dying is imminent. To keep a corpse in the capsule is psychologically inappropriate. Embalming requires toxic chemicals. Incineration is impossible.

NASA, by a group of Danish design students, fell for Promessa Organics method as a way around the problem. The study was done back in 2004, but has been topical in a new book by author Mary Roach on the human side of next March flight.

Susanne Wiigh Masak

Promessa method is based on the frozen body, vibrated apart to dust and freeze-dried in a vacuum. The space has been cold and vacuum-free. Outside the craft 272 ° C. freezing the body about in an hour, The powder that remains stored in a coffin made of Gore-tex, a kind of last sleeping bag, outside the spacecraft until it is time to return to Earth. But tragedy makes an impression.

Last Updated ( Friday, 10 September 2010 )