CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission greater than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation.
SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown within the Pacific close to San Diego, lower than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station.
“It’s so good to be house,” mentioned NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, the capsule commander.
It was an surprising end to a mission that started in August and left the orbiting lab with just one American and two Russians on board.
NASA and SpaceX mentioned they might attempt to transfer up the launch of a recent crew of 4; liftoff is at present focused for mid-February.
Cardman and NASA’s Mike Fincke have been joined on the return by Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov. Officers have refused to establish the astronaut who had the well being downside or clarify what occurred, citing medical privateness.
Whereas the astronaut was steady in orbit, NASA wished them again on Earth as quickly as doable to obtain correct care and diagnostic testing. The entry and splashdown required no particular adjustments or lodging, officers mentioned, and the restoration ship had its traditional allotment of medical consultants on board. It was not instantly recognized when the astronauts would fly from California to their house base in Houston. Platonov’s return to Moscow was additionally unclear.
NASA confused repeatedly over the previous week that this was not an emergency.
The astronaut fell sick or was injured on Jan. 7, prompting NASA to name off the following day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke, and in the end ensuing within the early return. It was the primary time NASA reduce brief a spaceflight for medical causes. The Russians had finished so a long time in the past.
The house station has gotten by with three astronauts earlier than, typically even with simply two. NASA mentioned will probably be unable to carry out a spacewalk, even for an emergency, till the arrival of the following crew, which has two Individuals, one French and one Russian astronaut.
The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Division of Science Schooling and the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis. The AP is solely chargeable for all content material.
