NASA on Wednesday will attempt to bring four astronauts home early from the International Space Station after one crew member experienced a medical issue in orbit, the agency announced.
In a statement issued late Friday, NASA said undocking from the space station will occur no earlier than 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, provided weather conditions are clear at the designated splashdown site off the coast of California.
It will be the first time in the space station’s 25-year history that a mission will be cut short because of a medical incident in space.
NASA said one of its astronauts experienced a medical issue earlier this week but did not provide additional details about the problem or the identity of the crew member due to medical privacy concerns.
Agency officials said in a news briefing Thursday that the situation is stable, and the early departure is a precautionary measure rather than an emergency evacuation.
“After discussions with chief health and medical officer Dr. JD Polk and leadership across the agency, I’ve come to the decision that it’s in the best interest of our astronauts to return Crew-11 ahead of their planned departure,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at the briefing.
The crew members who will be returning back to Earth next week are NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. The astronauts, known as Crew-11, arrived at the International Space Station in early August and had been expected to stay aboard the orbiting laboratory until late February.
The Crew-11 astronauts will make the return trip in the same SpaceX Dragon capsule that they flew to the space station. If they depart as planned on Wednesday evening, they are expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean nearly 11 hours later, at approximately 3:40 a.m. Thursday.
Additional details about the precise landing time and location will be provided by NASA and SpaceX closer to the time of undocking, the space agency said.
After Crew-11’s early departure, NASA will face several weeks with just one of its astronauts aboard the space station to oversee U.S. science experiments and operations — flight engineer Chris Williams, who launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Nov. 27. Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev will remain there with him.
The next crew members are scheduled to launch to the ISS in mid-February, but Isaacman said NASA will evaluate whether to bump up that mission, known as Crew-12.
