NASA to bring space station astronauts home early due to medical issue
NASA announced Thursday that it will return four astronauts aboard the International Space Station to Earth more than a month ahead of schedule due to a medical issue — the first such evacuation in the space station’s 25-year history.
Citing medical privacy concerns, NASA did not provide additional details about the problem, including the identity of the affected crew member, the nature of the medical problem, or its severity. Agency officials, however, said the situation was stable.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at a news conference that the astronauts would return home in the coming days. The agency has not yet given a specific timetable for undocking or landing.
“After discussions with Chief Medical Officer Dr. JD Polk and agency leadership, I have decided that it is in the best interest of our astronauts to return Crew 11 before their scheduled departure,” Isaacman said.
Isaacman added that further updates will be provided over the next 48 hours.
The group leaving the International Space Station includes NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. The astronauts, known as Crew-11, arrived in early August and were expected to remain aboard the orbiting laboratory until the end of February.
Polk said the situation is stable and the evacuation is not considered an emergency. Rather, he said, the decision was made out of an abundance of caution for the health and well-being of the astronaut involved.
“We have a very robust set of medical equipment aboard the International Space Station, but we don’t have the full amount of equipment that I would need in the emergency department, for example, to perform a patient assessment,” Polk said. “And in this particular incident, the medical incident was significant enough that we were concerned about the astronaut and would like to complete that workup.”
NASA first made the medical issue public Wednesday, when it announced it was postponing a spacewalk that Cardman and Fincke were scheduled to perform on Thursday.
After the early departure of Crew 11, NASA will face several weeks with just one of its astronauts aboard the space station to oversee U.S. science experiments and operations: flight engineer Chris Williams, who blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Nov. 27. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Platonov, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev are there with him.
The next crew members are expected to launch to the ISS in mid-February, but Isaacman said NASA will evaluate whether to scale up that mission, known as Crew-12.
This week’s drama in orbit is the first major test for Isaacman: He was sworn in on December 18.
