WASHINGTON: Four International Space Station (ISS) crew members splashed down in the Pacific Ocean early Thursday, video footage from NASA showed, after a medical issue prompted their mission to be cut short.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the four crew members -- American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui -- landed off the coast of San Diego about 12:41 a.m. (0841 GMT), marking the first-ever medical evacuation from the ISS.
First-ever medical evacuation
The US space agency has declined to disclose which crew member has the health problem or provide details about the issue, but it has stressed that the return is not an emergency.
The affected crew member “was and continues to be in stable condition,” NASA official Rob Navias said Wednesday.
“First and foremost, we are all OK. Everyone on board is stable, safe and well cared for,” Fincke, the pilot of SpaceX Crew-11, said previously on social media.
“This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists. It’s the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet,” he added in a post this week.
The Crew-11 quartet arrived at the ISS in early August and had been scheduled to stay on board until they were rotated out in mid-February with the arrival of the next crew.
James Polk, NASA’s chief health and medical officer, said “lingering risk” and a “lingering question as to what that diagnosis is” led to the decision to bring back the crew earlier than originally scheduled.
American astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived at the station in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, remained on the ISS.
The Russian Roscosmos space agency operates alongside NASA on the outpost, and the two agencies take turns transporting a citizen of the other country to and from the orbiter — one of the few areas of bilateral cooperation that still endures between the United States and Russia.
