In the small hours of the Pacific morning, a SpaceX Crew Dragon carrying four astronauts soared through the atmosphere with its heat shield blazing brightly against a dark sky. Later, a parachute deployment sequence unfolded to deliver a precise splashdown off the coast of San Diego. It was a flawless splashdown, although the mission it concluded was far from routine. It was the first controlled medical evacuation ever performed from the International Space Station by NASA.
The astronauts on board the Crew-11 mission, which comprises NASA’s own astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui, and Russia’s Oleg Platonov, have already spent 167 days on orbit. Their return is significantly earlier than expected because of the onset of a medical condition on board one of the astronauts last week. Though the identity of the astronaut and the condition are yet to be revealed by NASA, the condition has been stable.
According to NASA’s chief medical officer, James “JD” Polk, this is a “controlled medical evacuation” and not emergency scramble response. It is a fact that NASA and SpaceX have the ability to return the astronauts home in a matter of hours in the worst-case situation. Return of these astronauts happened through a normal process of undocking and re-entry. Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour is like a lifeboat for all four astronauts.
On the ISS, the effect of the crew rotation is visible. With the departure of Crew-11, only three members are left in space. They are Chris Williams of NASA, as well as cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev of Russia. Williams is left alone to manage the US section of the ISS. It is his duty to manage it alone. Members from Russia are in charge of Russia’s sections. With fewer members in space, some scientific experiments are put off. Spacewalks are also not possible.
This was a wise and far-sighted move. Polk said: There was still “some risk” involved in having this astronaut orbit without a diagnosis. NASA Chief Executive Officer Jared Isaacman, who was appointed only a few days ago, termed it ‘a decision that “puts crew health and safety first.” This is our long-held philosophy. Although medical facilities on board are adequate for handling a medical emergency on board, these are kind of ambulances and not hospitals. Specialized imaging studies, surgical procedures, and some kinds of lab tests are still carried out on Earth. The astronauts were assisted into the SpaceX recovery ship after the splashdown. The four astronauts were taken to a medical facility in San Diego for examinations before being returned to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Rehabilitation will be required after the astronauts have spent so long in zero gravity. This can result in muscle atrophy and reduced bone density. Historically speaking, early returns from mission due to health issues are a very rare phenomenon. In the Soviet Union, this type of situation occurred in the 1970s and 1980s when missions were aborted due to the health issues of the commanders on board their Salyut space stations. There was an expectation that the ISS could have a medical evacuation every three years; it took 25 years for the first one to occur. Advances in the medical capabilities of the space station have enabled the astronauts to address issues on the space station that otherwise required an early return on previous missions.
For NASA, the Crew-11 mission is both historic and a learning experience. NASA plans to learn from the Crew-11 mission and develop better medical protocols for space travel not only for the ISS but for the lunar bases and the Mars missions as well. This is because in deep space, escape to Earth will not be an available alternative, and thus all that needs to be prevented or diagnosed or treated must occur in space. We will absolutely learn from this situation… whether that be on the space station or our future lunar base, Isaacman explained.
Ultimately, the early return of the Crew-11 mission has been a wake-up call that despite the advances that have enabled space travel to become a routine reality, human space travel remains the balance between the need for exploration and the limitations of the human body. While the splashdown may mark the end of one chapter, it is the start of something new in the way that space agencies will protect the individuals who travel beyond our world.
