Marcia Dunn
Updated ,first published
Cape Canaveral, Florida: An astronaut in need of doctors’ care has left the International Space Station with three crewmates in NASA’s first medical evacuation and is expected to splash back to Earth on Thursday evening (AEDT).
The returning astronauts – from the US, Russia and Japan – should be retrieved from the Pacific Ocean near San Diego about 7.40pm AEDT, after riding back to Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The decision to evacuate cuts short their mission by more than 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 nature of the health concerns.
The ailing astronaut was “stable, safe and well cared for,” outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke said this week via social media. “This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists.”
Launched in August, Cardman, Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov should have remained on the space station until late February. But on January 7, NASA abruptly cancelled the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke and later announced the crew’s early return.
Officials said the health problem was unrelated to spacewalk preparations or other station operations, but offered no other details, citing medical privacy. They stressed it was not an emergency.
Splashdown is expected at 7.41pm (AEDT) on Thursday. NASA’s live coverage will begin at 6.15pm (AEDT).
NASA said it would stick to the same entry and splashdown procedures at a flight’s end, with the usual assortment of medical experts aboard the recovery ship in the Pacific.
It will be another middle-of-the-night crew return for SpaceX, coming less than 11 hours after undocking from the space station. They will spend more than nine hours in orbit as the spacecraft’s trajectory lines up with its landing spot.
NASA said it was not yet known how quickly all four would be flown from California to Houston, home to Johnson Space Centre and the base for astronauts.
One US and two Russian astronauts remain aboard the orbiting lab, 1½ months into an eight-month mission that began with a Soyuz rocket lift-off 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.
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 as fortunate. 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 encountered less serious health issues that shortened their flights.
It was the first spaceflights for Cardman, a 38-year-old biologist and polar explorer who missed out on spacewalking, and 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.
Cardman should have been launched last year but was bumped to make room on the way down for NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were stuck nearly a year at the space station because of Boeing’s capsule problems.
Fincke, 58, a retired Air Force colonel, and Yui, 55, a retired fighter pilot with the Japan Air Self-Defence Force, are repeat space fliers. Fincke has spent more than a year in orbit over four missions and conducted nine spacewalks on previous flights, making him one of NASA’s top performers. Last week, Yui celebrated his 300th day in space over two station stays, sharing stunning views of Earth, including Japan’s Mount Fuji and breathtaking auroras.
“I want to burn it firmly into my eyes, and even more so, into my heart,” Yui said on the social platform X. “Soon, I too will become one of those small lights on the ground.”
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 would have to stand down from any routine or even emergency spacewalks, a two-person job requiring back-up help from crew inside the orbiting complex.
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 assumed the agency’s top job in December.
“The health and the well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority,” he said.
AP
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