Jan. 14 (UPI) — NASA’s Crew-11 returned safely to Earth on Thursday after the first ever medical evacuation from the International Space Station.
The agency posted a video online of SpaceX‘s Dragon space capsule carrying American astronauts Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Kimiya Yui of Japan, splashing down in the Pacific off the coast of San Diego at 3.41 a.m. EST.
“Welcome home! Splashdown of Crew-11 after 167 days in space,” NASA announced.
NASA also posted a photo of the crew inside their capsule after splashdown.
A medical issue with one astronaut prompted NASA to evacuate a crew from the station for the first time in its almost three-decade-long history.
It was not clear which of the four developed the medical issue sometime in the five months from when Crew-11 blasted off from Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 1 and Jan. 7 when NASA announced a crew member had a “serious medical condition.”
The issue was not deemed an emergency, but NASA officials opted to cut short the mission by a month and evacuate all Crew-11 members, with the four departing the ISS on Wednesday afternoon to head back to Earth.
“It is not an emergency de-orbit, even though we always retain that capability and NASA and our partners train for that routinely,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told media on Jan. 7.
“The capability to diagnose and treat this properly does not live on the International Space Station,” Isaacman said.
NASA officials did not identify the affected crew member or the medical condition prompting the evacuation, but they said the individual is in stable condition.
The matter arose when a medical issue reported on Jan. 7 forced NASA to delay a planned spacewalk on Thursday that involved the affected astronaut.
Cardman and Fincke were scheduled to do the postponed spacewalk, which narrows the medical condition to one of those two.
NASA chief medical officer Dr. James Polk said the medical issue involves microgravity and is not caused by an injury or an operational issue.
The limited ability to diagnose the medical condition required the evacuation, and the affected astronaut is expected to recover.
While the medical evacuation is the first in the history of the ISS, Polk said statistical analysis suggested such issues should arise about every three years aboard the orbiting science lab.
The departure of the four Crew-11 members leaves the ISS with a skeleton crew of three until replacements are deployed.
Those three are astronaut Christopher Williams and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, who arrived at the ISS on Nov. 27 after being conveyed by a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavor carried the four to the ISS on Aug. 1, and their six-month deployment was nearing its end when they were ordered to return to Earth.
“We’re always going to do the right thing for our astronauts, but it’s recognizing it’s the end of the mission right now,” Isaacman said of the medical evacuation.
“They’ve achieved almost all of their mission objectives,” he added. “Crew-12 is going to launch in a matter of weeks, anyway.”
Isaacman said the spaceship is ready and the weather is ideal, making it an “opportune time” to bring them home.