Shortly after returning to Earth from a nearly eight-month stint aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA took an astronaut to a hospital on Friday due to a medical concern. The astronaut, whose identity NASA has withheld for privacy concerns, had landed on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule off the coast of Florida at 3:29 a.m. ET. The team, which consisted of a Russian cosmonaut and two additional NASA astronauts, had all spent a lengthy 235 days in space, which is a little longer than the normal six-month stay for ISS missions.
NASA later confirmed that only one astronaut required additional medical care, despite the fact that the team was sent to a medical center to be checked out as a precaution after landing. Since then, the other three crew members have returned to Houston from the hospital. NASA hasn’t released any information regarding the problem, but says the hospitalized astronaut is stable and being watched as a precaution.
A picture of their cosmonaut, Alexander Grebenkin, standing up and grinning after the flight and splashdown was shared on Telegram by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.
Due to two hurricanes that struck the southeast U.S., which impacted Crew Dragon’s designated splashdown zones, the crew’s return from the ISS was actually postponed several times. Since Boeing’s Starliner, which is meant to be a backup, is still resolving years of development concerns, SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, is currently NASA’s only choice for flights to and from the ISS.
Using parachutes, the Crew Dragon capsule safely landed in the Gulf of Mexico after disengaging from the ISS on Wednesday and entering Earth’s atmosphere early Friday. NASA stated at a press conference following the splashdown that all crew members were doing well and made no mention of any health concerns. They did see two small parachutist glitches: one of the four primary parachutes took a little longer to open, and the first set of braking parachutes collided with some debris. NASA reassured everyone, however, that these had no bearing on the crew’s safety and that the splashdown conditions was “ideal” for the recovery.
There is a significant amount of miles on this specific Crew Dragon capsule. According to William Gerstenmaier, the chief of flight reliability at SpaceX and a former top official at NASA, this was the company’s sixth voyage in orbit, with a total of 702 days since its first mission.
