• Question: what happens when there is an injury?

    Asked by 498nch35 to Simon, Julia, Delma, Andrew, Alex on 15 Dec 2015. This question was also asked by 552nch35.
    • Photo: Andrew Winnard

      Andrew Winnard answered on 15 Dec 2015:

      They have first aid kits aboard the space station and all the astronauts are trained in first aid and some basic medicine. So they can look after each other if they get any minor injuries. They are also able to do some emergency room activities like resusitating each other and getting someone breathing again if they have stopped. If a crew member becomes really unwell, then they would evacuate them back to Earth on the Soyuz. The problem with that evacuation is that landing puts quite a bit of stress on the body and the soyuz capsule and space suit doesn’t easily allow space for medical equipment to be attached to astronauts during landing. So it could be really difficult. It would be a bad day if an astronaut needed evacuating for medical reasons. So far it has not happened though.

    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 15 Dec 2015:

      Andrew’s hit the main points there. It’s also worth noting that they make sure astronauts are 100% healthy before they go into space, so nothing should go wrong with them when they’re up there. Astronaut Tim had two weeks of quarantine before he launched today to make sure he didn’t catch any illnesses right before he left! The astronauts keep close eyes on their health with the help of a flight surgeon at Mission Control who is like their personal doctor. Lastly, astronauts take great care while on a mission to do things very carefully and in a way that they’re not liklely to hurt themselves!

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