For the first time ever, NASA has been forced to cut a mission to the International Space Station short due to a “serious medical condition” affecting a crew member.
The four Crew-11 astronauts, who arrived at the station in early August, will now be returning a month early on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. All four crew members must return together, since they all rely on the same spacecraft for transportation and a place to hide out in case of an emergency.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about what occurred. On Thursday, NASA held a news conference to discuss the situation, insisting that the crew member was “stable” and that “due to medical privacy,” it wouldn’t be “appropriate for NASA to share more details about the crew member.”
The agency, however, revealed that the unidentified crew member did not sustain an injury and was “totally unrelated” to any space operations, including a Wednesday spacewalk that was unexpectedly cancelled.
Recently sworn-in NASA administrator Jared Isaacman made the announcement that the Crew-11 mission would be cutting their time on board the aging orbital outpost short. It’s likely the biggest decision he’s had to make during his extremely short tenure as the agency’s head.
More information about a more detailed timeline will be released within the next 48 hours.
“After discussions with our 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 interests of our astronauts to return Crew-11 ahead of their planned departure,” he said.
Polk also insisted that “because the astronaut is absolutely stable, this is not an emergency evacuation.”
“We’re not immediately disembarking and getting the astronaut down,” he added.
It’s a historic moment for the space station. Despite having been continuously inhabited since the year 2000, there has never been an early evacuation, as the BBC points out. According to Polk, early predictive models concluded a medical evacuation would happen once every three years — not 25.
“For over 60 years, NASA has set the standard for safety and security in crewed spaceflight,” Isaacman said during Thursday’s conference. “In these endeavors, including the 25 years of continuous human presence onboard the International Space Station, the health and well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority.”
Getting medical treatment in the cramped and microgravity environment of the ISS isn’t easy. Astronauts are highly trained for medical emergencies, but beyond being able to provide EMT-like treatment, options are limited, Ars Technica reports, options are limited.
“We have a very robust suite of medical hardware onboard the International Space Station, but we don’t have the complete amount of hardware that I would have in the emergency department, for example, to complete the workup of a patient,” Polk told reporters.
The ISS will have to continue operations with a much smaller crew of three after the departure of the Crew-11 crew. According to Isaacman, the subsequent Crew-12 mission may be moved up from its current February 15 date.
More on the situation: Astronaut on Space Station Suffers Medical Issue