Nasa orders its first-ever space station medical evacuation after astronaut falls ill | International Space Station
NASA has ordered the first medical evacuation from the International Space Station in its 25-year history after an astronaut at the orbiting laboratory fell ill with a “serious” but undisclosed problem.
The US space agency said at a press conference that the four-person crew, led by US commander Zena Cardman, will return to Earth in the coming days, earlier than planned.
Officials did not identify the astronaut or the problem, citing patient privacy. “This was a serious medical condition,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. “That’s why we’re moving forward on this path.”
The decision to evacuate the crew in a space capsule followed a series of hasty statements from NASA about a medical condition that emerged on Wednesday. This development later forced the agency to cancel the first spacewalk of the year.
NASA expects to provide updates on the astronauts’ docking separation and atmospheric reentry timeline within the next 48 hours, Isaacman said.
The four-person crew arrived on a SpaceX capsule in August to stay for at least six months. Cardman is accompanied by US astronaut Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui from Japan and Oleg Platonov from Russia.
NASA’s chief of health and medicine, Dr. James Polk said the sick crew member is currently in stable condition, but there is a “long-lasting risk,” adding that the problem was not properly diagnosed.
What the medical problem might have been is a matter of speculation, but it is clear that it was not properly treated on the ISS. Even with a doctor on board, the agency would still want to bring the astronaut home, Isaacman said.
He said there was some time to play and if there was an emergency the crew could have escaped within a few hours.
The station, which has been continuously inhabited since 2000, has also dealt with serious medical problems in the past. There is also an astronaut among them. He has a blood clot problem in his carotid artery.suggests that the current situation is particularly serious.
The only time a space agency terminated a space station mission early due to health concerns was for cosmonaut Vladimir Vasyutin in 1985. came back He came from the Soviet station due to infection and high fever.
Only one person is sick on the current NASA mission, but all four must return because the agency aims to make sure the ISS never has more crew on board than there are available seats in onboard space capsules. These capsules are supposed to act as lifeboats or rescue vehicles.
Cardman and Fincke were supposed to perform the spacewalk in preparation for the future introduction of solar panels to provide additional power to the space station.
According to NASA, this was Fincke’s fourth visit to the ISS and Yui’s second. This was Cardman and Platonov’s first spaceflight.
“I am proud of the agency’s swift efforts thus far to ensure the safety of our astronauts,” Isaacman said.
ISS will not be left blank. Three other people live and work on the ship. US astronaut Chris Williams and Russians Sergei Mikayev and Sergei Kud-Sverchkov arrived aboard a Soyuz rocket in November for an eight-month stay.
Nasa plans to deorbit the aging space station, which is expensive to operate, in late 2030 or early 2031. The idea is to do this slowly so that the metal lab burns down and some debris falls into the ocean.
