Astronauts splash down after cutting space station mission short due to a medical issue

Four astronauts returned safely to Earth Thursday morning, capping a dramatic and unusual week in space that forced crew members to leave the International Space Station about a month earlier than planned due to a medical issue in orbit.

NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov touched down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 3:41 a.m. ET after a nearly 11-hour journey.

“On behalf of SpaceX and NASA, welcome home, Crew-11,” mission controllers radioed to the astronauts moments after their Dragon capsule hit the water.

Their return was the first time in the space station’s 25-year history that a mission was aborted due to a medical issue.

Due to medical privacy concerns, NASA has not released the identity of the affected crew member or provided details about the medical incident. However, he indicated that the situation was stable and did not constitute an emergency.

At a news conference last week, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the decision to bring crew members home early was made out of an abundance of caution.

The medical issue forced NASA to cancel a spacewalk planned for Jan. 8, which was supposed to allow Cardman and Fincke to perform upgrades outside the ISS.

Before leaving the orbiting outpost, Fincke said he and his colleagues were “stable, safe and well cared for.”

“This is a deliberate decision to allow appropriate medical assessments to take place in the field, where the full range of diagnostic capabilities exists,” Fincke wrote in a statement on LinkedIn. “It’s the right decision, even if it’s a little bittersweet.”

The astronauts returned to Earth in the same SpaceX Dragon capsule in which they traveled to the space station.

The return trip was smooth, with mission controllers reporting “impeccable weather conditions” at the landing site off the coast of California. The capsule’s sea anchor and main parachutes successfully deployed minutes before landing, slowing the spacecraft before it hit the water.

SpaceX personnel quickly arrived on scene to examine the capsule before it was hoisted onto the deck of the recovery ship. Dolphins could be seen swimming playfully as they bobbed in the ocean.

Fincke was the first to be helped out of the capsule about 50 minutes after landing, followed by Cardman, Yui and Platonov. The astronauts were all smiles as they emerged, giving thumbs up and waving to the cameras.

The astronauts, known as Crew-11, spent 165 days aboard the space station. This was Cardman and Platonov’s first space flight, while Yui completed her second trip to orbit. Fincke, meanwhile, now has four space flights under his belt.

The astronauts arrived at the ISS in August and were expected to stay there until the end of February. With the early departure of Crew 11, only three people are aboard the space station: NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.

The next rotation of space station crew members was scheduled to take off no earlier than Feb. 15, but NASA said it was exploring options to increase that flight. Williams will likely be the only NASA astronaut to oversee U.S. science experiments and operations on the station for at least a few weeks.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com