The POT revealed this Wednesday that the commander of the Crew-11 mission, Mike Fincke, was the astronaut who suffered a health problem during his stay on the International Space Station (EEI), which forced the return date of the ship to be brought forward, although the illness was not specified.
“On January 7, while aboard the International Space Station, I experienced a medical event that required immediate attention from my incredible crewmates,” Fincke said in a statement shared by NASA.
He added that his state “it stabilized quickly” thanks to the response of his colleagues and NASA flight surgeons.
The mission commander indicated that he is currently “very good” and continues in Houston, Texas, with the reconditioning after the special mission, which returned to Earth on January 15, a month before the scheduled return date.
According to the testimony of Fincke, who does not offer more details about the medical mishap he suffered, the space agency determined that the safest thing was for him to return to the planet with the rest of the astronauts so that he could be evaluated more closely and with medical material not available on board the orbital laboratory.
“The safest path was an early return for Crew-11; not as an emergency, but as a carefully coordinated plan,” Indian.
In addition to Fincke, the other three members of the mission that spent five and a half months in orbit were NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, Japanese astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Kimiya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut from Roscosmos, Oleg Platonov.
Along with them were astronauts Chris Williams, from NASA, and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, from Roscosmos, on board the space station.
The early return of Crew-11 became the first medical evacuation in the history of the ISS.