Crew-11 Enthusiastic Despite Early Return

The four members of Crew-11 met with reporters today to discuss their nearly six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. Such news conferences are routine, but this time the crew returned four weeks early because one is experiencing a medical issue. They declined to say who or what it is for privacy reasons, but appeared as enthusiastic about their flight as any of their predecessors.

Commander Zena Cardman (NASA), Pilot Mike Fincke (NASA), and Mission Specialists Kimiya Yui (JAXA) and Oleg Platonov (Roscosmos) all appeared fit during the approximately 45 minute event at Johnson Space Center.

They splashed down in their Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule at 3:41 am ET on Thursday off the coast of San Diego. Instead of returning directly to Houston as usual, they all stayed at a local hospital overnight apparently so the ill crew member could not be identified. They flew back to Houston Friday afternoon.

The only comment anyone made with regard to medical issues was Fincke mentioning the value of having an ultrasound device on the ISS.

“Having a portable ultrasound machine helped us in this situation. We were able to take a look at things that we had and didn’t have.  [We] got so much experience with ultrasound in looking at human bodies as we change over time as part of science and medicine so when we had this emergency the ultrasound machine came in super handy. So I’d recommend portable ultrasound machines in the future for sure for all spaceflights. It really helped.

“Now of course we didn’t have other big machines that we have here on planet Earth, and maybe some of those can’t be in space, and we do try to make sure that everybody before we fly are really, really not prone to surprises. But sometimes … surprises happen and the team was ready.” — Mike Fincke

The unusual end to their mission began on January 8 as Fincke and Cardman were getting ready to make a spacewalk — Fincke’s 10th and Cardman’s first. Just after 5:00 pm ET, NASA said the spacewalk would be postponed “due to a medical concern with a crew member.” A few hours later they expanded that to say they were considering bringing them home early.  By 5:00 pm ET on January 9 NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman decided to do just that. He and Chief Health and Safety Officer JD Polk stressed it was not an emergency deorbit, but a “controlled medical evacuation” that would use standard procedures for departure, reentry, splashdown and recovery.

Fincke was Commander of the ISS and a routine Change-of-Command ceremony took place on January 12 ET. They undocked on January 14 at 5:20 pm ET and splashed down about 10.5 hours later.

Cardman, commander of Crew-11, began the news conference today by restating they would not discuss the medical condition or who is affected. They spent almost six months living and working on the ISS conducting a wide array of scientific experiments as do all the ISS crews. The only difference this time is they returned early and couldn’t have a multi-day handover to their replacements on Crew-12. One NASA astronaut remains on the ISS, Chris Williams, who is part of the Soyuz MS-28 crew. He is bridging the gap between Crew-11 and Crew-12 in terms of keeping the experiments going with the assistance of teams on the ground and his two Russian colleagues Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev. Crew-12 was scheduled to launch on February 15 and NASA is trying to move that forward a few days.

Fincke said their early departure would affect the timeline for some of the experiments, but everything will get done nonetheless. The same is true for the two spacewalks — the one on January 8 and another that was scheduled for January 15. They are important, but not urgent. The ISS is nearing the end of its lifetime. The ISS partnership — the U.S, Russia, Japan, Canada, and 11 European countries operating through the European Space Agency — plans to deorbit it in 2030, but “there’s still some more years left in our beautiful space station.”

As for the four members of Crew-11, they are ready to go again. All were exuberant about their trip on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to and from the ISS and the months they spent onboard together and with crewmates from Russia’s Soyuz MS-27 and Soyuz MS-28. The usual crew complement on the ISS is seven — three Russians, and four from the United States and the other partners. Three travel on Soyuz and four on Crew Dragon.

The U.S. and Russian ISS segments are interdependent so at least one person from each country must be aboard to operate the space station. NASA and Roscosmos include a crew member from each other’s country on every launch exactly for this type of situation.

While this is the first time NASA has ended a space mission early due to illness, it is not the first time someone in space had to come home early for medical reasons. Russia has been operating space stations much longer than the United States and at least three Russian cosmonauts reportedly were brought home sooner than planned for medical reasons from the Salyut 5 space station in 1976, from Salyut 7 in 1985, and from Mir in 1987.

Cardman is no stranger to sudden changes either. She was slated to command Crew-9 in 2024, but NASA’s decision to keep the two Starliner Crew Flight Test astronauts on the ISS instead of returning on Starliner meant she had to give up her seat along with NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson so Starliner’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams could use them to return home. (NASA announced yesterday that Williams retired from NASA on December 27. Wilmore retired in August.)

She was reassigned to command Crew-11, with Fincke as pilot and Yui as a mission specialist. Fincke and Yui had been in training for several years for the next Starliner flight, but with Boeing and NASA still working out problems with the propulsion system, both were reassigned to Crew-11.  Today, both said they’d still like to fly on Starliner while conceding their chances were rather low since newer astronauts are still waiting their turn to fly to space. Yui now has 309 days in space over two missions and Fincke 549 days over four flights.

This was the first flight on Crew Dragon for both of them, however. Their earlier flights were on Russia’s Soyuz and, for Fincke, also NASA’s space shuttle. They agreed landing in the ocean and rocking back and forth in the waves is a lot different than Soyuz’s abrupt landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan or the shuttle’s on the runway at Kennedy Space Center. Not better or worse, especially, just different. Yui did say he was surprised how “smooth and comfortable” Crew Dragon was, but “I really loved, actually, both.” Fincke added that “shuttle came in very benignly” with a “pink glow” while Soyuz’s ablative heat shield “really speaks to you with lots of different fireworks in a very, very good way.” Dragon, which also has an ablative heat shield, is “somewhere in between.”

NASA is getting ready to launch a crew around the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era on Artemis II. The Orion capsule also has an ablative heat shield that performed differently than expected during the Artemis I uncrewed test flight.  NASA is changing the reentry profile to compensate.  “It will be great to compare notes with the Artemis crew when they have their splashdown,” Fincke said.