NASA considers bringing crew home early due to medical issue with astronaut

NASA is considering a rare early return of its crew from the International Space Station over an unspecified medical issue involving one of the astronauts, after cancelling a planned spacewalk that had been scheduled for Thursday, the agency said.

A NASA spokeswoman said the astronaut with the medical concern, whom she did not identify, was in a stable condition on the orbiting laboratory.

“Safely conducting our missions is our highest priority, and we are actively evaluating all options, including the possibility of an earlier end to Crew-11’s mission,” the spokeswoman said in a statement on Wednesday night.

NASA said in an earlier statement that it was “monitoring a medical concern with a crew member that arose Wednesday afternoon.”

Astronauts typically live in six- to eight-month rotations on the ISS, with access to basic medical equipment and medications for some types of emergencies.

The four-person Crew-11 crew includes U.S. astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. They have been on the space station since launching from Florida in August and were scheduled to return around May this year.

Fincke, the station’s designated commander, and Cardman, assigned as flight engineer, were scheduled to conduct a 6½-hour spacewalk on Thursday to install hardware outside the station.

NASA’s astronaut corps regards medical situations on the ISS as closely held secrets, and astronauts rarely acknowledge or describe publicly their medical conditions.

Spacewalks are arduous and risky missions that require months of training, involving bulky spacesuits and carefully co-ordinated instructions while tethered to the ISS.

In 2024, NASA called off a planned spacewalk last-minute because an astronaut experienced “spacesuit discomfort.” U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei in 2021 called off his spacewalk over a pinched nerve.