• Question: has anyone ever died on the ISS?

    Asked by 752trn28 to Anne, Beth, COLFlight, Jon, Tom on 12 Oct 2015.
    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 12 Oct 2015:

      Simon: Hi 752trn28!

      No-one has died or been significantly injured yet after 17years of constant occupation on the ISS, which I think is due a great space station design and well trained astronauts and flight controllers! but we are not complacent. The ground and crew regularly train 4 main emergency events (EMER):

      – Fire
      – Loss of Atmosphere
      – Toxic Spill
      – Ammonia Leak

      In most cases these events have so far never happened. We do occasionally get unexplained Smoke Detector alarms or strange smells that may be related to something burning but we have had no confirmed fires so far. We do though have a few false alarms which keep us alert and enable us to exercise our emergency responses!

    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 15 Oct 2015:

      Hey 11P SHS!!

      As Simon says fortunately no one has died while on the ISS and hopefully wont in the future! There are extensive safety protocols in place to help keep Astronauts like Tim safe, and so far have worked well. Unfortunately problems have occurred on launch and re-entry.

      If an astronaut does have a medical problem while they are on the ISS it is possible to evacuate them back to early quickly. This is different to here in in Antarctica where we have no opportunity of evacuation, even in case of emergency for 9 months. This is because the temperatures are too low for planes to fly to come and get us during the winter months!

      If we are going to think about travelling further in space, e.g. Mars then we will have to change our medical protocols and provisions for astronauts accordingly (as we won’t be able to evacuate them as is currently possible on the ISS). This is one of the reasons that Concordia is such a useful place to do research as the medical provisions we provide here will be similar to those needed on a long duration spaceflight mission.

      Here at Concordia we have a hospital, operating theater, 2 medical doctors and really good telemedicine facilities (so we can video call specialist doctors back home for advice)

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