READAPTATION: It can take days or weeks for astronauts to readjust to gravity after living in weightless environment for several months
AP, CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida
A NASA astronaut was taken to the hospital for an undisclosed medical issue after returning from an about eight-month space station stay extended by Boeing’s capsule trouble and Hurricane Milton, the space agency said on Friday.
A SpaceX capsule carrying three Americans and one Russian parachuted before dawn into the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast after undocking from the International Space Station mid-week. The capsule was hoisted onto the recovery ship where the four astronauts had routine medical checks.
Soon after splashdown, a NASA astronaut had a “medical issue” and the crew was flown to a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, for additional evaluation “out of an abundance of caution” the space agency said in a statement.
From left, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps depart their crew quarters for the launch pad before their mission to the International Space Station, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 3.
Photo: Reuters
The astronaut, who was not identified, was in stable condition and remained at the hospital as a “precautionary measure,” NASA said.
The space agency said it would not share details about the astronaut’s condition, citing patient privacy.
The other three astronauts were discharged and returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
It can take days or even weeks for astronauts to readjust to gravity after living in weightlessness for several months.
The astronauts should have been back two months ago. However, their homecoming was stalled by problems with Boeing’s new Starliner astronaut capsule, which came back empty last month because of safety concerns. Then Hurricane Milton interfered, followed by another two weeks of high wind and rough seas.
SpaceX launched the four — NASA’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin — in March. Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home that had “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us… And helped us to roll with all those punches.”
Their replacements are the two Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose own mission went from eight days to eight months, and the two astronauts were launched by SpaceX four weeks ago.
Those four would remain up there until February next year.
The space station is now back to its normal crew size of seven — four Americans and three Russians — after months of overflow.
