Ailing astronaut, 3 other ISS crew members splash down in first-ever medical evacuation
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The US space agency has declined to identify the crew member who has the health problem or give details about the issue,
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON – Four International Space Station (ISS) crew members splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Jan 15 after a medical issue
American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japan’s Kimiya Yui landed off the coast of San Diego about 12.41am (4.41pm, Singapore time), marking the first-ever medical evacuation from the ISS.
An earlier video feed from NASA showed the four crew members undocking from the ISS at 2220 GMT on Jan 14 (6.20am on Jan 15, Singapore time) after five months in space.
The US space agency has declined to identify the crew member who has the health problem or give details about the issue, but it has stressed the return is not an emergency situation.
The affected crew member “was and continues to be in stable condition”, NASA official Rob Navias said on Jan 14.
“First and foremost, we are all okay. Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for,” Colonel Fincke, the pilot of SpaceX Crew-11, said previously on a 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. It’s the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet,” he added in the post this week.
The Crew-11 quartet arrived at the ISS in early August and were scheduled to stay onboard the space station until they were rotated out in mid-February with the arrival of the next crew.
Dr 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 originally scheduled.
American astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived at the station in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, remained on the ISS.
The Russian Roscosmos space agency operates alongside NASA on the outpost. The two agencies take turns transporting a citizen of the other country to and from the orbiter – one of the few areas of bilateral cooperation that still endure between the United States and Russia.
Ready for the unexpected
Continuously inhabited since 2000, the ISS seeks to showcase multinational cooperation, bringing together Europe, Japan, the United States and Russia.
Located some 400km above Earth, the space station functions as a test bed for research that supports deeper space exploration, including eventual missions to return humans to the Moon and onward to Mars.
The four astronauts being evacuated were trained to handle unexpected medical situations, said Mr Amit Kshatriya, a senior NASA official, praising how they have dealt with the situation.
The ISS is set to be decommissioned after 2030
