New astronauts launch to the International Space Station after medical evacuation

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A new crew headed to the International Space Station Friday to replace astronauts who returned to Earth at the start of NASA’s first medical evacuation.

SpaceX launched the replacements as soon as possible at NASA’s request, sending the American, French and Russian astronauts on a planned eight-to-nine-month mission that extends into the fall. The four are expected to arrive at the orbiting lab on Saturday, filling positions left vacant by their colleagues evacuated last month and returning the space station to full complement.

“It turns out that Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit. “It was quite an adventure,” responded crew commander Jessica Meir.

NASA had to suspend its spacewalks and postpone other tasks while awaiting the arrival of Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, Frenchwoman Sophie Adenot and Russian Andrei Fedyaev. They will join three other astronauts – an American and two Russians – who operated the space station last month.

Satisfied with the medical procedures already in place, NASA ordered no additional checks for the crew before liftoff and no new diagnostic equipment was packed. An ultrasound machine already used for research was kicked into high gear on Jan. 7 when it was used on the sick crew member. NASA has not revealed the identity or medical condition of the ill astronaut. The four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after landing in the Pacific near San Diego.

It was the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight that NASA aborted a mission for medical reasons.

With missions getting longer and longer, NASA is constantly looking to improve the space station’s medical equipment, said Deputy Program Director Dina Contella. “But there are a lot of things that are just not practical and so that’s when we need to bring astronauts back from space,” she said earlier this week.

In anticipation of trips to the Moon and Mars where health care will be even more challenging, the newcomers will test a filter designed to turn drinking water into emergency intravenous fluid, try an ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of experts on the ground, and perform ultrasound scans on their jugular veins as part of a study of blood clots.

They will also demonstrate their moon landing skills during a simulated test.

Adenot is only the second French woman to launch into space. She was 14 when Claudie Haignere flew to the Russian space station Mir in 1996, inspiring her to become an astronaut. Haignere traveled to Cape Canaveral to cheer her on.

“I thought it would have been a quiet joy and a point of pride for Sophie, but it was so emotional to see her successfully launch,” Haignere said.

Hathaway, like Adenot, is new to space, while Meir and Fedyaev are making their second trip to the station. Just before liftoff, Fedyaev led the crew in a shout of “Poyekhali” – the Russian word for “Let’s go” – the word spoken during liftoff by the world’s first person in space, the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin, in 1961.

On her first mission in 2019, Meir participated in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of this spacewalk, Christina Koch, is one of four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the Moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio link is planned between the two crews.

Meir wasn’t sure if astronauts would return to the Moon during her career. “We are now on the precipice of the Artemis II mission,” she said before liftoff. “The fact that they’re in space at the same time as us… it’s so cool to be an astronaut now, it’s so exciting.”

SpaceX launched the last crew from the Cape Canaveral space station. Elon Musk’s company is preparing the launch pad at the nearby Kennedy Space Center for the giant spacecraft NASA needs to land its astronauts on the Moon.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.