NASA is bringing Crew 11 home from the International Space Station after an undisclosed medical issue. ISS Commander Mike Fincke said the entire crew are “stable, safe and well cared” for with the decision to return home a month early “the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet”
Last Friday the American space agency made the announcement in a rare, but not unprecedented, move after a crew member reported a medical issue the day before. The astronaut in question and the nature of the medical concern have not been disclosed under long standing privacy guidelines, but a photo posted to Commander Fincke’s LinkedIn profile indicates whatever the problem is, it’s not debilitating in any way.
Fincke, Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, Kimiya Yui and Oleg Platonov are scheduled to now disembark the station on January 15, checked over on a SpaceX recovery vessel before being flown to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
While this will be NASA’s first time calling early time on a mission due to a medical issue it’s not humanity first spacefaring mission to do so – Dr Brad Tucker noting that Russia needed to return cosmonaut Vladimir Vasyutin four months early from Salyut-7 due to a prostate infection.
Dr Tucker also notes that all crew members need to be returned because the station cannot be inhabited without a means of escape.