For the first time ever, NASA has been forced to cut a mission to the International Space Station short due to a «serious medical condition.»
For the first time ever, NASA has been forced to cut a mission to the International Space Station short due to a “serious medical condition” affecting a crew member.
The four Crew-11 astronauts, who arrived at the station in early August, will now be returning a month early on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. All four crew members must return together, since they all rely on the same spacecraft for transportation and a place to hide out in case of an emergency.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about what occurred. On Thursday, NASA held a news conference to discuss the situation, insisting that the crew member was “stable” and that “due to medical privacy,” it wouldn’t be “appropriate for NASA to share more details about the crew member.”
The agency, however, revealed that the unidentified crew member did not sustain an injury and was “totally unrelated” to any space operations, including a Wednesday spacewalk that was unexpectedly cancelled.
