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Four astronauts have returned to Earth from the the International Space Station (ISS) in Nasa’s first medical evacuation after an undisclosed medical issue prompted their mission to be suddenly cut short.
The US space agency has declined to disclose which crew member had the health problem or give details about the issue, but has said the astronaut was “stable”.
The capsule made a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego. “It’s so good to be home,” Zena Cardman, a US astronaut and the mission’s commander, said after they landed.
A video feed from Nasa showed Cardman, her Nasa colleague, Mike Fincke, the Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and the Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui being carried out of the capsule and placed on stretchers, a normal procedure after five months in low gravity. All smiled and waved as they emerged.
“Our timing of this departure is unexpected,” 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.”
The affected crew member “was and continues to be in stable condition”, the Nasa official Rob Navias said on Wednesday.
“First and foremost, we are all OK,” Fincke, the pilot of SpaceX Crew-11, said in a recent social media post. “Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for.
“This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists. It’s the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet.”
The four evacuated astronauts had been trained to handle unexpected medical situations, said Amit Kshatriya, a senior Nasa official, praising how they had dealt with the situation.
Computer modelling predicted a medical evacuation from the space station every three years, but Nasa hasn’t had one in its 65 years of human spaceflight. The Russians have not been so fortunate. In 1985, the 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 encountered less serious health issues that shortened their flights.
The Crew-11 quartet arrived at the ISS in early August and had been scheduled to stay until they were rotated out for the next crew in mid-February.
James Polk, Nasa’s chief health and medical officer, said “lingering risk” and a “lingering question as to what that diagnosis is” led to the decision to bring back the crew earlier than scheduled.
The US astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived at the station in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, are remaining on the ISS.
Until SpaceX delivers another crew, Nasa said it would have to stand down any routine or even emergency spacewalks, a two-person job requiring backup help from crew inside the orbiting complex.
The Russian Roscosmos space agency operates alongside Nasa on the outpost, and the agencies take turns transporting a citizen of the other country to and from the orbiter – one of the few areas of bilateral cooperation between the US and Russia.
Continuously inhabited since 2000, the ISS seeks to showcase multinational cooperation, bringing together Europe, Japan, the US and Russia.
With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
