NASA to bring ISS Crew-11 astronauts back to Earth Saturday
Crew-11 mission astronauts wave as they leave the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Payments Building for the complex launch of LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Aug. 1, 2025. From right/left, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, NASA astronaut and mission commander Zena Cardman, and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui.
Greg Newton | Afp | Getty Images
NASA will return Crew-11 astronauts to Earth from the International Space Station on Saturday, weeks ahead of schedule, due to the medical condition of an unnamed crew member, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced Thursday afternoon.
The agency said earlier in the day that it was postponing a spacewalk by U.S. astronauts outside the ISS due to the medical condition that emerged on Wednesday.
The spacewalk would require ISS Commander Mike Fincke and flight engineer Zena Cardman to leave the space station for 6.5 hours to install routing cables and other power equipment to support a new solar array.
NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya said at a news conference Thursday that the solar array will be installed later and that the upgrade is not a necessity for crew safety or maintaining ISS operations.
Fincke and Cardman are members of NASA’s Crew-11, along with Kimiya Yui and Oleg Platonov from space agencies in Japan and Russia.
The crew launched from NASA Kennedy Space Center on August 1, 2025, aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.
The agency said it would not release the crew member’s name or specific condition for medical privacy reasons.
The astronaut’s condition is considered stable and the medical condition is not due to “any injury sustained during operations,” NASA Chief Medical Officer James D. Polk said at a news conference Thursday.
Polk also said that “there is a very robust suite of medical equipment on board the International Space Station,” but that it does not include all the tools doctors would have to complete a full patient exam in a hospital emergency room. He said the astronaut’s “medical event was adequate” and that NASA decided to bring Crew-11 back early due to “ongoing risk.”
The return of the Crew-11 astronauts was planned for around March 2026. The decision to bring back astronauts early due to a medical condition represents a first for NASA.
The agency’s last early emergency return involved the STS-83 Space Shuttle mission in 1997, when one of Columbia’s fuel cells failed in orbit. This mission landed safely.
