An astronaut who had a “serious medical condition” onboard the International Space Station is safely back on Earth, after the first-ever emergency return space flight.
The astronaut and three others returned from a mission in space a month early, making a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego early on Thursday.
With assistance from SpaceX, the capsule landed less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station (ISS).
Their first stop was a hospital for an overnight stay, going through standard procedure and medical checks.
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At a press conference ahead of their journey to hospital, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said that the four crew members are “safe” and in “good spirits”.
And according to Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA, it was only “about a week ago” when NASA decided to bring home Crew-11 early.
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He added that the team “meticulously went through all the processes”. “You saw the result of that today,” he said, noting that the crew completed 140 experiments during their time in space.
Science correspondent
Spacecraft plunge back to Earth so frequently these days that it’s almost routine.
But this one was special; the first medical evacuation from the International Space Station.
We don’t know which of the four crew members had a problem that couldn’t be resolved on the ISS, nor what the problem was.
But NASA decided it was serious enough to bring the astronauts home a month early.
The crew commander, Mike Fincke, described it as “bittersweet”.
A safe splashdown means medics will be able to extract the stricken astronaut and get them the care they need.
Back up on the International Space Station, a skeleton crew of three will keep essential services running – until a SpaceX launch in the next few weeks brings four more astronauts to serve a six-month term on the orbiting laboratory.
The four astronauts onboard the capsule were NASA’s Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, as well as Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov.
Officials have refused to identify the astronaut who developed the health problem last week or explain what happened, citing medical privacy. But Mr Isaacman said the “crew member of concern is doing fine”.
He said an update on their health would be given “when it is appropriate to do so”.
The return marks the first time that NASA had cut short the rotation of an ISS crew due to a health emergency.
During the descent, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour parachuted into calm seas off San Diego at about 12.45am eastern time (8.45am in the UK).
In a radio transmission to the SpaceX flight-control centre near Los Angeles, Endeavour’s commander, Ms Cardman, 38, was heard saying, “It’s good to be home.”
It’s unclear what caused the medical issue, but the astronaut fell sick or was injured on 7 January, prompting NASA to call off the next day’s spacewalk by Ms Cardman and Mr Fincke.
NASA Chief Health and Medical Officer James Polk also noted that the medical emergency did not involve “an injury that occurred in the pursuit of operations”.
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Crew-12 is expected to launch to the ISS in mid-February with four more astronauts reinforcing the crew.
In the meantime, it remains occupied by NASA astronaut Christopher Williams and two cosmonauts who flew to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in November.
