Last week, NASA announced that it had postponed a January 8 spacewalk after a crew member suffered a medical incident on board the International Space Station. The agency said at the time that the “matter involved a single crew member who is stable.”
Roughly a day later, NASA held a news conference, officially announcing the first medical evacuation in the space station’s 25-year history.
The four Crew-11 astronauts, who arrived at the station in early August, were originally scheduled to return to Earth next month. However, thanks to the medical incident, they boarded their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule weeks early on Wednesday afternoon, safely splashing down off the coast of San Diego in the early morning hours of Thursday.
“For over 60 years, NASA has set the standard for safety and security in crewed spaceflight,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman at last week’s news conference. “In these endeavors, including the 25 years of continuous human presence on board the International Space Station, the health and the well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority.”
That means the space station has gone from seven crew members down to a “skeleton crew” of three: NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev, who arrived at the station in November on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Its largest crew, a whopping 13 astronauts, was set back in 2009.
“Despite all the changes and all the difficulties, we are going to do our job onboard ISS, performing all the scientific tasks, maintenance tasks here, whatever happens,” said Kud-Sverchkov on Monday.
“Chris [Williams] is trained to do every task that we would ask him to do on the vehicle,” NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya told reporters last week, noting that “he will have thousands of people looking over his shoulder.”
While it’s a rare occurrence, it’s not the first time the station has been this short-staffed. There have been several instances of having just three astronauts take care of the aging orbital outpost. As the New York Times points out, there have even been times when the station was taken care of by just two crew members as well — though mostly during the early days of the station, when it was much smaller.
For instance, following the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the ISS crew was reduced to just two.
Per Ars Technica, the station’s “nominal” crew size was upgraded to six and seven in 2009 and 2020, respectively.
According to Isaacman, the agency is looking to move up SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission to bring a fresh batch of four astronauts to the largely empty station. The mission was originally scheduled for February 15, but a new date has yet to be announced.
NASA’s priority is to get as much out of the station before its planned retirement four years from now. With just three crew members, science work will slow down significantly. The agency will also not be able to perform any spacewalks, per Space.com.
“The Station will be more vulnerable until the replacement crew of 4 can launch, but we have deep experience running the place with just 3 astronauts for a while,” former astronaut Chris Hadfield wrote in a January 8 tweet.
NASA astronaut and Crew-11 member Michael Fincke called it a “bittersweet” moment in a Sunday post on LinkedIn, four days ahead of splashing down in the Pacific.
“Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for,” he wrote. “This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists.”
“We’re grateful for the teamwork, proud of the mission, and looking forward to coming home soon — back to our loved ones and to resolving any medical questions with the best care available,” Fincke added.
“It’s the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet,” he concluded.
More on the evacuation: NASA Announces Emergency Evacuation From Space Station
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