Cryonics
Cryonics was a method of preserving individuals that could no longer be sustained by available medicine, with the purpose/intention of reviving them later on.
A discarded Earth medical procedure, it was intended to preserve a terminally-ill patient by way of freezing, and resurrecting them in the future when their condition in curable. This would be achieved by placing the body in a sort of suspended animation, freezing their body at temperatures around −196 °C, −320.8 °F, or 77.1 K. At this point in time, metabolic processes and decay were almost completely halted.
Although cryonics became popular on Earth late in the 20th century, it was widely abandoned within 50 years.
In those early days, some cryogenically frozen individuals were preserved even further by sending them into long-term storage in space within orbiting satellites. The fad did not continue much beyond the mid-21st century.
In 2364, the USS Enterprise-D intercepted a space module that had been launched from Earth in 1994, and had long since drifted out of the planet's orbit.
Doctor Beverly Crusher was able to revive three of the Humans aboard who had not been subject to preservation failure: L.Q. Clemonds, Ralph Offenhouse, and Clare Raymond.
See also: Cryogenics, the study of low temperatures and their effects
