Ever consider what might transpire to your body if you passed away in outer space? To address the challenging questions pertaining to the uncommon situation, researchers have pooled their minds.

Within the next seven years, NASA wants to launch a second manned space mission to the moon, with even more ambitious plans to take people to Mars in the 2030s.

It will take a long-distance trip and several months in space to travel to the red planet. This necessitates thinking about how people would survive for such a protracted period of time in space.

Twenty people have perished in space since the start of manned spaceflight more than 60 years ago. All of these fatalities, though, occurred as a result of unsuccessful launches that were aborted before exiting the atmosphere of the Earth.

Although NASA hasn’t yet had to deal with a death that occurs in space (because they haven’t had to), some of the world’s leading space researchers have developed their own theory.

Without a pressurized spacesuit to protect them, a person could perish in space by being exposed to the vacuum.

The former commander of the International Space Station and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield discusses the worst-case scenario.

“Worst case scenario, something goes wrong during a spacewalk,” he remarked.

“There is nothing you can do to prevent being struck by a micro-meteorite, which could strike you at any time.

“It could rip a hole in your suit and render you unconscious in a matter of seconds.”

Now for the graphic portion. You probably believed it to be a purely dramatic effect used in movies, but it’s not.

The awful death faced by an astronaut exposed to the vacuum was detailed by Emmanuel Urquieta, professor of space medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, who claimed that their blood and other vital fluids would effectively boil.

According to Popular Science, in just 10 seconds the poor astronaut’s blood and body’s water would evaporate.

After their body horrifyingly swelled and their lungs compressed, they would lose consciousness in 15 seconds. In 30 seconds, they would either be paralyzed or, more likely, die from asphyxiation or decompression.

The problem of burial, or lack thereof, is another.

Urquieta explained that burial or cremation would not be an option if someone passed away on Mars since they “could contaminate the Martian surface.”

Until it could be brought back to Earth, he said, “the crew would probably preserve the body in a specialized body bag.”

If an astronaut had the misfortune to perish in space, their body would eventually enter a frozen or mummified state and float through the ether – potentially for millions of years, since there is no oxygen to prompt decomposition – until it was obliterated by a planet or star, or perhaps heat or radiation, or perhaps it was destroyed by a star or planet.

A positive idea for a Sunday.