The four astronauts currently on the International Space Station will return to Earth more than a month earlier than planned because one of them is sick. NASA has so far declined to say who among Americans Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov is experiencing a “medical situation,” citing privacy concerns, but it has decided to bring them all back on Saturday instead of Feb. 20 as planned. The illness is described as serious, but the crew member is stable. It’s the first time a NASA mission has been scrubbed for medical reasons in the 65-year history of NASA’s human spaceflight program. On Wednesday, NASA canceled a 6.5-hour spacewalk in which the American astronauts were to install the wiring and supports for new solar panels on the ISS. The work will help ensure the station can keep operating until its planned decommissioning in 2030.
Experimental Aviator Editor-at-Large Paul Dye, a former NASA Lead Human Space Flight Director, told NPR that crew well-being is always the top priority on a mission. “In flight, you do what is necessary for the safety of the crew and then the success of the mission,” he said. “Safety of the crew comes first, and if the only answer is to bring them home, then you bring them home.” Dye said that even though mission duration has never been affected by a medical issue, it’s part of the training all crew and support staff go through. “It’s actually fairly unremarkable from a standpoint of muscle memory, if you will, or mental muscle memory,” said Dye, “because we just work that kind of stuff all the time in training.”
I find it comforting that NASA has demonstrably shaken off the macho “Right Stuff” mission-centric grind-it-out ethos that dominated our early forays into space. Frankly, given the number of long-duration occupants of the ISS, I’m surprised that this hasn’t happened sooner. I seem to recall that it has, for an individual with a medical condition, but this is the first I’ve heard of an entire crew being recalled. I guessing that was a logistical consideration.
I wonder who had the fish.