ISS astronauts begin journey back to Earth in Nasa’s first ever medical evacuation | Space
Four crew members have left the International Space Station (ISS) and are returning to Earth after a medical issue caused their month-long mission to be aborted during NASA’s first medical evacuation.
A NASA video feed showed US astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui undocking from the ISS at 10:20 p.m. GMT on Wednesday, after five months in space.
“The timing of this departure is unexpected,” Cardman said before the return trip, “but what didn’t surprise me was how much this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other.”
The US space agency declined to reveal which crew member had a health problem or provide details about the problem, but it stressed that the return was not an emergency.
The crew member concerned “was and continues to be in stable condition,” NASA official Rob Navias said Wednesday.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the four crew members is expected to land off the coast of California around 0840 GMT on Thursday.
“First and foremost, we are all fine. Everyone on board is stable, safe and well cared for,” Fincke, the SpaceX Crew-11 pilot, said in a recent social media post.
“This is a deliberate decision to allow appropriate medical assessments to take place in the field, where the full range of diagnostic capabilities exists. It is the right decision, even if a little bittersweet.”
Computer modeling predicted a medical evacuation from the space station every three years, but NASA has not had one in its 65 years of human spaceflight. The Russians were not so lucky. In 1985, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Vasyutin contracted a serious infection or related illness aboard his country’s Salyut 7 space station, prompting him to quickly return. A few other Soviet cosmonauts experienced less serious health problems that shortened their flights.
The Crew-11 quartet arrived at the ISS in early August and were scheduled to remain aboard the space station until they were removed in mid-February with the arrival of the next crew.
James Polk, NASA’s chief health and medical officer, said a “continuing risk” and a “lingering question about diagnosis” led to the decision to bring the crew back sooner than initially planned.
American astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived at the station in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, remain on board the ISS.
Until SpaceX delivers another crew, NASA said it would have to step back from any routine or even emergency spacewalks, a two-person job requiring crew assistance inside the orbiting complex.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos operates alongside NASA on the outpost, and the two agencies take turns transporting a citizen of the other country to and from the orbiter – one of the few areas of bilateral cooperation that still persists between the United States and Russia.
Permanently inhabited since 2000, the ISS seeks to highlight multinational cooperation bringing together Europe, Japan, the United States and Russia.
The four evacuated astronauts had been trained to deal with unexpected medical situations, said Amit Kshatriya, a senior NASA official, praising the way they had handled the situation.
With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
