WASHINGTON: Shortly after returning to Earth from a nearly eight-month mission aboard the International Space Station on Friday, a Nasa astronaut was flown to a hospital with an unidentified medical issue.
Three other crew members, two Nasa astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut, had splashed down off the coast of Florida aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. Nasa did not name the astronaut for privacy reasons.
In the beginning, Nasa stated that the entire crew was transported to the medical center for additional evaluation out of an abundance of caution. However, the company did not specify whether all or a portion of the crew was experiencing problems.
Later, Nasa said that one of its astronauts had a medical problem and that the crew had been flown to a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, near where the spacecraft was about to splash down.
The space agency reported that the remaining three crew members have since left the hospital and returned to Houston.
In a statement, Nasa referred to the Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital, saying, “The one astronaut who remains at Ascension is in stable condition under observation as a precautionary measure.” The nature of the astronaut’s condition, according to the agency, will not be disclosed.
“Out of an abundance of caution, all crew members were flown to the facility together” for the additional evaluations, despite the crew’s standard medical examinations upon exiting the craft, Nasa stated.
Nasa, which is usually quiet about medical issues involving astronauts, declined to explain the crew’s condition or explain the excessive caution. A request for information regarding Grebenkin’s condition was not immediately responded to by the Russian space agency.
SpaceX keeps an armada of reusable shuttle and has traveled to the ISS multiple times. The only US option for Nasa astronaut trips to and from the ISS is the company owned by Elon Musk. Years of development issues have hampered Boeing’s Starliner, which was intended to serve as a second US flight.
The Crew-8 astronauts spent 235 days on the International Space Station (ISS), a science lab the size of a football field and 402 kilometers above Earth. This was more time than the typical six-month mission for an astronaut on the ISS. Additionally, it was SpaceX’s Crew Dragon’s longest mission to date, having launched in 2020.
Due to two hurricanes that passed through the southeast of the United States near Crew Dragon’s anticipated splashdown zones, the crew’s return had been delayed for weeks. However, the Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully undocked from the ISS on Wednesday afternoon and reentered the atmosphere of Earth early on Friday morning, deploying its parachutes before crashing into the Gulf of Mexico.
A Nasa official said that “the crew is doing great” at a news briefing after the splashdown. He didn’t say anything about problems with the astronauts, but he did say that Crew Dragon’s parachute deployment had two problems.
According to Richard Jones, deputy manager of Nasa’s Commercial Crew Program, Crew Dragon’s initial set of braking parachutes experienced some “debris strikes,” and one of the four parachutes in a subsequent set took longer to unfold than anticipated.
