WASHINGTON: A Nasa astronaut was flown to a hospital with an unspecified medical issue on Friday shortly after returning to Earth from a nearly eight-month mission on the International Space Station.

The astronaut, who Nasa did not name for privacy reasons, had splashed down off Florida’s coast aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule with three other crew members — two Nasa astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut.

Nasa initially said the entire crew was transported to the medical centre for additional evaluation and out of an abundance of caution, but did not specify whether all or a portion of the crew had been experiencing issues.

Nasa later said it was one of its astronauts who experienced a medical issue and that the crew had been flown to a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, near the splashdown site.

The three other crew members have since left the hospital and returned to Houston, the space agency said.

“The one astronaut who remains at Ascension is in stable condition under observation as a precautionary measure,” Nasa said in a statement, referring to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital. The agency said it will not share the nature of the astronaut’s condition.

The crew had their standard medical evaluations upon exiting the craft, Nasa said, but added, “out of an abundance of caution, all crew members were flown to the facility together” for the additional evaluations.

Nasa, which is usually tight-lipped on astronaut medical issues, declined to say what prompted the abundance of caution or describe the crew’s condition. Russia’s space agency did not immediately return a request for comment on Grebenkin’s condition.

SpaceX maintains a fleet of reusable spacecraft and has flown to the ISS 44 times. The Elon Musk-owned company remains the only US option for Nasa astronaut trips to and from the ISS. Boeing’s Starliner, intended as a second US ride, has been hobbled by years of development issues.

Marking 235 days in space, the Crew-8 astronauts’ stay aboard the ISS, a football field-sized science lab 402 km in orbit, was longer than the typical six-month astronaut missions on the station. It also marked the longest mission so far for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which debuted in 2020.

The crew’s return had been delayed for weeks because of two hurricanes that swept through the US southeast near Crew Dragon’s expected splashdown zones. But on Wednesday afternoon the Crew Dragon spacecraft safely undocked from the ISS and reentered Earth’s atmosphere early Friday morning, deploying parachutes before plunking into the Gulf of Mexico.

At a post-splashdown news briefing, a Nasa official said “the crew is doing great” and made no mention of any issues with the astronauts, but noted two hitches with Crew Dragon’s parachute deployment.

Richard Jones, deputy manager of Nasa’s Commercial Crew Programme, said Crew Dragon’s initial set of braking parachutes suffered some “debris strikes” and that one of four parachutes in a subsequent set took longer than expected to unfurl.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2024