The space station's four pilots were ordered to abort the mission and return to Earth ahead of schedule due to an apparently serious accident. medical problem affecting an unidentified crew memberNASA announced Thursday.
“Yesterday, January 7, the only crew member aboard the station experienced a medical emergency and is now in stable condition,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at a press conference.
“After discussions with Chief Medical Officer Dr. J.D. Polk and agency-wide leadership, I have determined that it is in the best interest of our astronauts to return Crew 11 before their scheduled departure (mid-February). … We expect to provide additional updates within the next 48 hours regarding the expected, anticipated schedule for undocking and re-entry.”
In keeping with the agency's strict medical confidentiality policy, NASA officials did not identify the astronaut in question or provide any details about the nature of the medical problem.
But the ailing astronaut is a member of NASA Crew 11, which includes commander Zena Cardman, veteran astronaut Mike Finke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
They were launched to the International Space Station on August 1 aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry. They planned to return to Earth around February 20, after the arrival of Crew 12's replacement.
Finke and Cardman planned to move outside the space station on Thursday to complete construction of a support truss for an additional solar array and a variety of other tasks.
But on Wednesday, NASA announced that the spacewalk had been canceled due to “medical issues” with one of the Crew 11 astronauts. The agency said the crew member's condition was “stable” but provided no other details.
Polk said Thursday that the astronaut in question was not injured or ill as a result of any operational aspects of life aboard the space station, adding that spacewalk training played no role in the incident.
Isaacman said the planned early return of Crew 11 was not an “emergency situation,” adding that the agency simply erred in exercising caution to ensure the astronaut's health and well-being. Regardless, Crew 11's early return would mark the first time in U.S. space history that a mission was aborted due to a medical issue.
Polk agreed that this was not an emergency situation, adding: “This is not an injury sustained during operations, but not related to the operational environment that we have now. These are mainly medical problems in complex microgravity zones and with the range of equipment that we have at our disposal to make a diagnosis.”
Space station crews have extensive medical equipment on board, and crew members are trained to serve as medical professionals.
Physician and former astronaut Tom Marshburn told CBS News that space station crews are “equipped to deal with everything that has happened in space in the 65 years of human spaceflight, any of those things that come up. Even in some extreme cases like a heart attack or something like that. We have the tools to do this.
“We simply cannot support someone who is sick for a very long period of time, perhaps just a few days. But almost any medical event you can imagine… can happen up there, yes.”
Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, said Crew 11 will follow normal procedures as it returns to Earth, where it will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California. SpaceX support crews and NASA flight surgeons will be on board the Crew Dragon rescue ship. The crew will be flown ashore by helicopter and then by plane back to the Johnson Space Center.
“As Dr. Polk mentioned, this is the first time we've done a controlled medical evacuation from a vehicle, so it's unusual,” Kshatriya said. “The entire crew is important to us and we do not want to do anything given the nature of the situation where we are putting the crew at further risk by deviating from our normal processes. That's why we're essentially doing a controlled, accelerated return.”
The space station has a permanent crew of seven people. Three launch and return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and four fly to and from the laboratory aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry ships operated by NASA.
Both spacecraft serve as lifeboats during extended crew stays on the space station. If a Soyuz or Crew Dragon pilot becomes ill or seriously injured aboard the station, that person will be joined by all of his or her crew members for the flight back to Earth.
Because of the constant possibility that the Soyuz or Crew Dragon would have to depart early, NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, agreed to send one NASA astronaut aboard each Soyuz and one Russian cosmonaut aboard each Crew Dragon.
The seat swap arrangement ensures that at least one Russian and one American will always be on board the station to operate the equipment in their modules if one spacecraft departs early and takes all crew members with it.
For this reason, after Crew 11 undocks from the station, NASA will still have one astronaut on board – Chris Williams – to operate systems in the laboratory's American modules. He was flown to the outpost in November aboard a Soyuz spacecraft along with two Russian crew members.
A former volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician with a Ph.D. With a bachelor's degree in astrophysics from MIT, Williams was a board-certified medical physicist at Harvard Medical School when he was selected to join NASA's 2021 astronaut corps.
After Crew 11 departs, Williams will fly the US segment of the space station on his own until Crew 12 arrives in February.
Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir, space station veteran, newcomers Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adeno and veteran cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev are scheduled to launch on February 15.
NASA and SpaceX are considering delaying that launch by a few days during operations to prepare the Space Launch System rocket for liftoff as early as Feb. 6 to send four astronauts into battle around the moon.
The high-profile Artemis 2 mission will be the first in more than 50 years to send astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon. Isaacman said he believes the early return of Crew 11 and perhaps the early launch of Crew 12 will have some impact on the lunar mission.
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