Crew-8 Will Reveal Hospitalization Details “In Fullness of Time”

The three NASA Crew-8 astronauts who returned to Earth last month firmly declined to answer questions today about who was hospitalized and why after splashdown. Astronaut Michael Barratt, a physician and member of the crew, spoke for all three and insisted privacy considerations and processes that need to be followed preclude providing any more information now, but they will explain more “in the fullness of time.”

Barratt, Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps spent an extra two months on the International Space Station (ISS), returning on October 25 instead of mid-August after 235 days in space, 232 of them aboard the ISS. The fourth crew member, Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Grebenkin, didn’t participate in today’s news conference because he has already returned home to Russia.

Barratt opened the briefing by acknowledging there might be “some interest” in why one crew member spent their first night back on Earth in a Pensacola hospital, but “we are still piecing things together” and would not answer questions about it.

NASA will not say which of the NASA astronauts was hospitalized or why.

Barratt held firm to that position when questions nonetheless were asked since medical research into the effects of long-durations in weightlessnes is one of the goals of the ISS program, but added:

“In the fullness of time, we will allow this to come out and document it. For now, medical privacy is very important to us. We maintain that always in many things, we do the same with due process. So both of those really negate our ability to talk about it today.” — Mike Barratt

The Crew-8 mission was quite eventful even before splashdown. Dominick and Barratt were both involved in spacewalks that had to be scrubbed at the last minute.  Each of them was paired with NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson. The Dyson-Dominick spacewalk was cancelled because Dominick experienced “spacesuit discomfort.”  Today he admitted it was frustrating to have trained so intensely for years only to have to scrub at the last minute, but “a thousand things have to be correct and that day we didn’t have all 1,000 things ready to go, little pieces of the puzzle, and so we made the right decision” to cancel.

The Dyson-Barratt spacewalk scrubbed after an umbilical connecting Dyson’s spacesuit to the ISS started spewing water just after she opened the hatch to exit the station. The water turned to ice and snow, covering her helmet and impairing her vision, but she was able to close the hatch and stop the leak. Barratt said today it was like a snowstorm inside the airlock, “dramatic … to be real honest. I think literally Tracy’s actions were nowhere short of heroic.” Cancelling was a “no brainer.”

In both cases, “the hardware was talking to us, to quote [former space shuttle program manager] Wayne Hale, and it was talking really loud those two days” saying “we’re not ready to do this,” Barratt said.

Dyson travelled to and from the ISS on Russian Soyuz spacecraft and returned to Earth in September. The suits have been fixed and are ready to go for the next spacewalk, planned for January.

After all that excitement, Crew-8’s return to Earth was delayed by about two months.

First NASA had to decide what to do about the two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who arrived on the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test in June. The spacecraft experienced propulsion failures and helium leaks before docking and NASA was debating whether it was safe enough to return them to Earth.  If not and they would have to stay on the ISS, they would have to wait and come home on the next crew rotation mission, Crew-9.  That meant Crew-9 couldn’t launch until the decision was made since they’d need two of the Crew-9 seats and two of the original Crew-9 members would have to stay home. In fact, that’s what happened.

Once NASA made that decision, a multi-week stretch of bad weather in Florida caused more delays in their return. They looked happy and healthy in a NASA photo taken after their Crew Dragon spacecraft was brought aboard the recovery ship and the hatch was opened. SpaceX’s live webcast showed each of them exiting the spacecraft, a little wobbly as one would expect after eight months in weightlessness, but not unusually so.

Studying the health effects of long-duration spaceflight is a key research area on the ISS as NASA develops plans to send people on multi-year trips to Mars. ISS crews spend about two hours a day exercising to stay in shape for their return to Earth.  Usually part of the exercise is on a treadmill, but Dominick said today that as part of medical research, he didn’t use the treadmill at all during the mission.  “The last time I walked was across the pathway to the rocket and the next time I walked after that was when we got out” of the spacecraft.

Their bodies are still adapting to life back on Earth. Epps stressed that “everyone is different” in how they readjust, “but every day is better than the day before.”  Sitting on hard chairs was mentioned as a particularly painful experience.