Like a mummy: what would happen to your body if you died on the Moon

Death is an uncomfortable topic, but an even more unsettling scenario is imagining what would happen to the human body after death on the Moon.

There have been people who have died in space — Soviet cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev, from , in 1971 — but there has never been a case where a corpse was left on the lunar surface so that we know exactly what would happen to a lifeless human body there.

Still, based on what is known about human decomposition and the Moon’s environment, scientists can now paint a plausible and possibly disturbing picture.

On the Moon, decomposition would depend mainly on extreme environmental factors. Without an atmosphere, temperatures on the lunar surface oscillate violently between intense heat and extreme cold: during the lunar “day”, they can reach around 121 °C, while during the lunar “night” they drop to around -133 °C (and even less in deep craters).

As each period of day and night lasts approximately two weeks, the moment of death would strongly influence the process, explains .

If death occurred during lunar night, the cold would quickly freeze the body as well as the bacteria inside, almost completely stopping decomposition; If it happened during the day, the bacteria present in the organism itself could begin decomposition, as on Earth, but for a short time. This is because another factor would be decisive: the dehydration extrema.

The Moon’s surface is practically in a vacuum. Without atmospheric pressure, the water in the human body would evaporate quickly. As the body is made up of around 60% water, it would lose moisture at an accelerated rate, shrinking and drying out. This loss of water would also kill the bacteria responsible for decomposition, interrupting the process.

The most likely outcome would be a effect similar to mummification. As in ancient Egypt, where moisture was removed from the body to preserve it, the lunar environment would act as a natural drying agent, but much faster. Still, alternating between extreme heat and cold could cause gradual tissue damage over time.

Another important element is the radiationwhich is much more intense on the Moon, due to the absence of atmosphere. Over very prolonged periods, this radiation could degrade parts of the body. Even so, it is possible that the bones remained intact for millions of years.