The NASA astronaut suffering from an unspecified health problem is now back on Earth for treatment. He returned early a week after the U.S. space agency reported that one of its crew members, whose identity has not been disclosed for privacy reasons, was experiencing a medical issue. For the first time in space exploration history, an astronaut has been evacuated due to health reasons.
As planned, this morning at 9:41 (Spanish peninsular time), the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific with the four crew members of Crew 11 mission, who would have returned to Earth in a month and a half if this medical issue had not arisen. The return journey of Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman - both from NASA, Kimiya Yui from the Japanese agency JAXA, and the Russian Oleg Platonov from Roscosmos began on Wednesday night at 11:30 p.m. when the Crew Dragon spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), and lasted ten and a half hours.
It is nighttime in the U.S., and NASA and SpaceX support personnel will now proceed to recover the Crew Dragon capsule and rescue the four crew members, who will undergo the routine medical check-up performed on returning astronauts, while the crew member affected by the health issue will receive treatment for his undisclosed condition.
Two hours after the Crew Dragon splashdown, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will hold a press conference to provide information on this special operation, which, if all goes well, will have been completed within a week.
Favorable weather conditions allowed the operation to proceed as planned a few days ago: At around 9:30 p.m., the hatch of their spacecraft, SpaceX's Crew Dragon, was closed, and two hours later, the capsule undocked from the Harmony module's spaceport on the ISS, beginning the journey back to Earth.
The three crew members who will remain on the ISS after the early departure of their colleagues are cosmonauts Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev and Chris Williams from NASA. They will be the only occupants of the orbital platform awaiting the arrival of the Crew 12 mission crew, whose launch is being expedited to replace their colleagues as soon as possible.
The replacement mission consists of Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway from NASA; French astronaut Sophie Adenot from the European Space Agency (ESA), and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. As announced by ESA on Tuesday, Crew-12 is scheduled to launch no earlier than Sunday, February 15, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.