Four astronauts are aiming for an early Thursday splashdown in the Pacific in NASA’s first medical evacuation from the International Space Station after it was decided that one of them required medical attention.
The four astronauts are from the US, Russia and Japan, whose mission has been cut short by over a month.
“Our timing of this departure is unexpected,” NASA astronaut Zena Cardman said before the return trip, “but what was not surprising to me was how well this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other.”
Officials refused to identify the astronaut who needed care last week and would not divulge the health concerns, but clarified that the ailing astronaut is “stable, safe and well cared for”. While stressing that it was not an emergency situation, the officials also said the health problem was unrelated to spacewalk preparations or other station operations.
“This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists,” said outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke said earlier this week via social media.
Launched in August, the mission included Cardman, Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov, who were all to remain on the space station until late February. But on January 7, NASA abruptly canceled the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke and later announced the crew’s early return.
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NASA said it would stick to the same entry and splashdown procedures at flight’s end, with the usual assortment of medical experts aboard the recovery ship, SpaceX, in the Pacific. NASA said it was not yet known how quickly all four would be flown from California to Houston, home to Johnson Space Center and the base for astronauts.
NASA officials had said it was riskier to leave the astronaut in space without proper medical attention for another month than to temporarily reduce the size of the space station crew by more than half. Until SpaceX delivers another crew, NASA said it will have to stand down from any routine or even emergency spacewalks, a two-person job requiring backup help from crew inside the orbiting complex.
One US and two Russian astronauts remain aboard the orbiting lab, just one-and-a-half months into an eight-month mission that began with a Soyuz rocket liftoff from Kazakhstan. NASA and SpaceX are working to move up the launch of a fresh four-person crew from Florida, currently targeted for mid-February.
NASA hasn’t had a medical evacuation in its 65 years of human spaceflight. However, in 1985, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Vasyutin came down with a serious infection or related illness aboard his country’s Salyut 7 space station, prompting an early return. A few other Soviet cosmonauts also encountered less serious health issues that shortened their flights.
The medical evacuation was the first major decision by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of a payment processing company and two-time space flier.
“The health and the well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority,” Isaacman said in announcing the decision last week.
It was the first spaceflight for Cardman, a 38, biologist and polar explorer who missed out on spacewalking, as well as Platonov, 39, a former fighter pilot with the Russian Air Force who had to wait a few extra years to get to space because of an undisclosed health issue. Fincke, 58, a retired Air Force colonel, and Yui, 55, a retired fighter pilot with the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, were repeat space fliers.
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