(Bloomberg) – NASA will in the coming days conduct a medical evacuation of an astronaut who is suffering from an undisclosed illness aboard the International Space Station (ISS), agency authorities said.
The early return will mark the first time in NASA’s history that a crewed mission has been terminated earlier than planned for medical reasons.
“The astronaut is absolutely stable,” said James Polk, NASA’s Chief of Health and Medicine, to reporters on Thursday. “We are not in an immediate emergency operation to bring him back, but there is a persistent risk and uncertainty about the diagnosis.”
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The astronaut returns along with the other three members of the Crew-11 mission, launched to the ISS in August. The mission was expected to last six months, like most NASA crewed missions, but the early return will trim about a month from the planned duration.
The mission team is composed of NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
NASA acknowledged the health issue on Wednesday, when it abruptly postponed a spacewalk scheduled for January 8 due to medical concerns.
“The capability to diagnose and adequately treat this case does not exist on the International Space Station,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at a press conference. “And there is a fairly broad consensus among our ground-based experts and the crew members in space.”
NASA officials did not reveal the astronaut’s name or the specific medical condition, citing privacy reasons. Polk emphasized, however, that the issue is not related to any station operational activity. “This is not an injury that occurred during operations on the ISS,” he said.
In light of the Crew-11 change, NASA and SpaceX are looking for ways to accelerate the launch of the next crewed mission to the ISS, called Crew-12. The flight was scheduled to launch on February 15, at the earliest, according to earlier information from the space agency.
Normally, NASA prefers that new astronauts arrive at the space station before the crews living aboard depart for Earth, so there is an operational handover between the two groups. But, with Crew-11’s early departure, the ISS will have two Russian cosmonauts and a single NASA astronaut, Christopher Williams, living aboard until Crew-12 arrives.
“Chris is trained to perform all the tasks we will ask of him on the vehicle,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA Associate Administrator, to reporters on Thursday.
Medical cases in space have previously interrupted missions. In 2021, astronaut Mark Vande Hei suffered a nerve compression that led to a delay of a spacewalk.
And in 2020, a case study revealed that an unidentified astronaut developed a blood clot in the jugular vein while living on the ISS.
The astronaut returned safely to Earth at the end of his six-month mission, after receiving NASA-supervised care and treatment from doctors on the ground.
