An Ohio State University Medical Center project contracted by NASA used cadavers to create technology for the Orion shuttle, space agency officials say.

Dustin Gohmert, who designs seats for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said three human bodies were used to develop special suits and landing systems for the NASA spacecraft, the Houston Chronicle reported Saturday.

"The testing with postmortem human subjects and mannequins is helping NASA to better define the human injury potential for the landing (forces) that we anticipate with Orion," Gohmert said of last year's testing at the Ohio site.

David Steitz, a spokesman for the NASA medical division, said the space agency follows current ethical standards whenever utilizing donated cadavers for research purposes.

"It's a socially awkward topic," Steitz told the Chronicle. "The bodies are all carefully handled through all of the tests. We follow ethical medical procedures with these bodies that have been donated for science."