WASHINGTON — A Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down off the California coast Jan. 15, bringing back four people from the International Space Station more than a month early because of a medical issue with one of them.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour splashed down off the coast of San Diego at 3:41 a.m. Eastern. It had undocked from the station at 5:20 p.m. Eastern Jan. 14.
Returning from the ISS after five and a half months there were NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, who served as commander and pilot, respectively, of Crew-11, along with mission specialists Kimiya Yui of the Japanese space agency JAXA and Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos.
NASA announced Jan. 7 that it moved up the return of Crew-11, which had previously been planned for no earlier than the latter half of February, after one person had a “medical concern” that could be best diagnosed on the ground. The agency, citing medical privacy, did not disclose which person had the medical issue or any details about it.
The issue “was sufficient enough that we were concerned about the astronaut,” said J.D. Polk, NASA chief health and medical officer, requiring tests beyond the scope of equipment available on the station. “The best way to complete that workup is on the ground, where we have the full suite of medical testing hardware.”
Photos and videos from the station, including a change-of-command ceremony on the station Jan. 12, offered no evidence of any medical conditions involving the crew. NASA had emphasized that the person who experienced the medical concern was stable.
“First and foremost, we are all OK. Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for,” Fincke wrote in a social media post Jan. 11. “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.”
With Crew-11 back on the ground, there are three people remaining on the ISS: NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev. Four new astronauts from NASA, ESA and Roscosmos are scheduled to launch on Crew-12 in mid-February, but NASA said when it announced the early return of Crew-11 it was studying moving up the Crew-12 launch.
