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After reading the question Have any animals that have been studied onboard the ISS come back alive?, my first thought was this: what about the ones that don't live?

It would seem that this wouldn't be an uncommon occurrence at least at first - humans don't do very well in microgravity, and animals even more so.

Obviously, one wouldn't want deceased animals floating around the station. Are these unlucky critters sent back with normal trash, or in a different way?

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All laboratory animals are sent and returned together, so far as I've ever heard. The animals are part of an experiment, and the experiment is not brought back piecemeal.

However, though the dead animals won't be 'floating around the station' I do wonder how the body is preserved before shipment down. Presumably, decomposition could be an issue.

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    $\begingroup$ Commander Chris Hadfield said that they treat human waste by exposing it to the vacuum of space before summarily disposing it. I think dead animals could also be temporarily exposed to the vacuum of space to kill all the bacteria and nullify decomposition. $\endgroup$
    – shortstheory
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 17:16
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    $\begingroup$ @shortstheory: I would love to see an official comment on that. I hate speculating about these things, because I find that the engineers who design the ISS systems usually know about more issues and are a bit more clever than I! $\endgroup$
    – dotancohen
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 17:24
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    $\begingroup$ Commander Hadfield speaks about waste disposal here: link I agree though, I have no info about how animals are actually taken care of in space! $\endgroup$
    – shortstheory
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 17:28
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There are many freezers on the station for storing samples for experiments.

Things that need to be disposed of, such as garbage are placed into a visiting cargo craft (Progress, ATV, HTV, Cyngus) which burn up on reentry.

Things that need to be returned to earth intact are stored until there is a vehicle capable of returning it. Previously that was the Space Shuttle, which could returns many thousands of kilos of cargo.

Currently Soyuz can return on the order of 100 kilos of cargo.

Dragon is about the only real option, which can return about 5000 lbs of cargo.

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Animals are flown to ISS for research purposes. So naturally scientists on the ground will want as much of the animal as possible returned for analysis.

For example, many Rodent Research missions have been performed on the ISS. Some require live return, but many have cold stowage return requirements. Sometimes whole specimens will be frozen, or sometimes the crew will dissect the animals and freeze only certain organs. This is usually accomplished in the MELFI (fun fact, I wrote 2Fish's fact sheet for that video), or sometimes in a GLACIER (a space mini-fridge).

enter image description here

A longer summary of NASA's Cold Stowage options can be read here.

For the sample return to earth, a Passive Coldbag can be used with Icebricks in Dragon. enter image description here

Or a small powered freezer like GLACIER, POLAR, or MERLIN can be used in Dragon depending on the requirements.

enter image description hereenter image description here

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