NASA Decides to evacuate entire Crew-11 from ISS

The story broke in the last 24 hours that first, a scheduled spacewalk for this morning (Jan. 8 at 8AM EST) with two astronauts from Crew-11 was being cancelled due to a medical issue with one of the two. Today, NASA decided to do an evacuation of the crew from the ISS while being careful to say it was not a medical emergency.  

For those who don't remember, Crew-11 was the replacement mission for Crew-9 which was the rescue mission for the Starliner astronauts,  Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. This was done by taking two astronauts off the Crew-9, mission commander Zena Cardman and mission specialist Stephanie Wilson to allow two seats for the stranded astronauts.  Zena Cardman was soon assigned to Crew-11; Stephanie Wilson was not.

The crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 on the International Space Station. Clockwise from top left are: NASA's Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman, Russia's Oleg Platonov and Japan's Kimiya Yui. (Image credit: NASA)

Cardman and Mike Fincke were the two scheduled for the spacewalk that has been postponed, so the medically affected crew member is one of those two, but out of respect for privacy, NASA has not officially named the crew member. They officially emphasize that the patient is stable, but that's all we know.

'"It is not an emergency de-orbit, even though we always retain that capability, and NASA and our partners train for that routinely," recently confirmed NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told reporters during a press conference on Thursday.

"The capability to diagnose and treat this properly does not live on the International Space Station," Isaacman added, explaining why he ultimately decided to speed up the departure timeline.

Crew-11 launched August 1st, and was scheduled to be replaced around February 20th, so cutting the mission short by around six weeks isn't a big impact and may have helped the decision. Crew-12 is reported to be launching NET February 12. 

There is no word yet on when Crew-11 will return or if 12 will be moved forward.  

Dr. James Polk, NASA's chief health and medical officer, said that the issue had nothing to do with the spacewalk or preparations for it, apparently alluding to the incident in 2021 when a crew member was unable to start a spacewalk due to a pinched nerve.

"This is not an operational issue. This was not an injury that occurred in the pursuit of operations," Polk said. "It's mostly having a medical issue in the difficult areas of microgravity, and with the suite of hardware that we have at our avail to complete a diagnosis."

In retrospect, the fact that there hasn't been a medical evacuation in the history of the ISS is really remarkable. The ISS has been continuously inhabited since November of 2000. Dr. Polk says that statistical analysis says they'd have one around every 3 years.  Or so.