Astronaut Daniel Tani was orbiting 200 miles above Earth when he learned his mother had died in a car accident. So he sent a video message for the funeral.
Astronaut Vladimir Dezhurov was on board the Russian space station Mir when he learned of his mother's death. He was despondent for days.
And on Jan. 8, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly was commanding the International Space Station when he learned someone in Arizona had shot his sister-in-law, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
'We have a unique vantage point here aboard the International Space Station,' Kelly said, in commenting about the tragedy: 'As I look out the window, I see a very beautiful planet that seems very inviting and peaceful. Unfortunately, it is not.'
Losses, both gentle and tragic, are a little-discussed challenge of space travel that will become increasingly important if NASA moves ahead with plans to send astronauts on longer-than-ever journeys, such as a trip to an asteroid or Mars.
On long space missions, astronauts may hear the news that makes people feel most alone — such as losing a parent — at the very time they are most alone.
NASA has already found itself in a predicament: Do you tell astronauts of the disasters down below or keep quiet?
Tell them, says George Abbey, former director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, which is home to Mission Control.
'They need to be straightforward and honest with crews on orbit. They need to recognize that these individuals are professional and situations do develop,' said Abbey, now a space policy expert at the Baker Institute at Houston's Rice University.
In the case of the Arizona shootings, it's clear Kelly was informed. In fact, he sent a Twitter message about it on the day it happened.
Even if NASA wanted to, it couldn't easily put a lid on bad news because the information explosion has extended into space. These days, astronauts communicate with their families by e-mail and phone calls.
Still, former NASA astronaut Norman Thagard has seen what bad news can do to a person in space.
Thagard was on board the Russian space station Mir in 1995 when the Russian commander, Dezhurov, learned his mother had died unexpectedly. 'It really did get to him. He basically just went to himself for about two to three days. … Our flight engineer urged him to eat and urged him to start being active again,' said Thagard, a retired associate dean of Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering.
Thagard said it's probably best for astronauts to let NASA managers know in advance whether they would like to get bad news immediately while in space or later on the ground.
The business of human space flight is poised for three big trends. One is the coming era of commercial space flights. Another is the new countries getting into space travel. The third is that the U.S. is planning to send humans farther into space than ever before.
The Bush administration planned to send astronauts back to the moon and eventually on to Mars. The Obama administration has replaced that plan with a more amorphous one but still promises to send humans on unprecedented journeys. One is a potential trip to an asteroid, a journey that could last six months. A trip to Mars and back could take three years.
Dealing with bad news isn't something you can train for completely, said Pat Duggins, a radio journalist and author of 'Trailblazing Mars: NASA's Next Giant Leap.'
Duggins says a radio transmission to Mars takes 10 minutes. So imagine: You are one of three humans in a spaceship on the red planet.
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