A crew of four astronauts returned to Earth from the International Space Station in NASA’s first-ever medical evacuation due to an undisclosed illness of one of the crew members.
A crew of four astronauts returned to Earth from the International Space Station in NASA’s first-ever medical evacuation due to an undisclosed illness of one of the crew members.
As Bloomberg reports, the astronauts undocked from the station in a SpaceX Dragon capsule and landed (or rather, landed on the water) off the coast of California on Thursday morning.
Thus, this forced medical evacuation shortened the crew’s expected stay on the ISS by about a month.
Earlier, NASA Chief Physician James Polk said that the astronaut’s condition was «absolutely stable,» but the agency decided to return the team to Earth earlier than expected to conduct a more thorough medical examination of the crew member.
At the same time, NASA is not disclosing the astronaut’s name or the nature of the medical problem for confidentiality reasons.
The four members of Crew-11 are known to have launched to the station in August for a mission expected to last about six months, the typical duration of a pilot’s flight to the station. The Crew-11 team consists of NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Finke, Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
When this crew left the space station, two Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronaut Christopher Williams remained on board.
The agency is working to expedite the arrival of the next crew, which was scheduled to launch in February.
Meanwhile, as dev.ua wrote, a 22-year-old has launched a startup that promises to open a hotel on the Moon and launch lunar tourism from 2032.
