A SpaceX capsule has splashed down back to Earth carrying four astronauts from the International Space Station, after a medical issue prompted them to evacuate and cut their mission a month short.<\/p>\n
The Crew Dragon spacecraft, dubbed Endeavour, parachuted into calm seas off San Diego.<\/p>\n
This marks the first time NASA has cut short the mission of an ISS crew because of a health emergency.<\/p>\n
The capsule undocked from the space station and began its descent from orbit about 9:20am AEDT (2220 GMT), with the journey taking less than 11 hours.<\/p>\n
The crew consists of US astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. They arrived at the space station following a launch to orbit from Florida in August.<\/p>\n
In a radio transmission to the SpaceX flight-control centre near Los Angeles, Endeavour’s commander, NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, was heard saying, “It’s good to be home.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Four SpaceX Crew-11 members are heading back to earth from the International Space Station. (Supplied: NASA)<\/p>\n
NASA officials have not identified which of the four crew members was experiencing a medical issue or described its nature, citing privacy concerns.<\/p>\n
While the astronaut was stable in orbit, NASA wanted them back on Earth as soon as possible to receive proper care and diagnostic testing.<\/p>\n
NASA stressed repeatedly over the last week that this was not an emergency.<\/p>\n
Wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A SpaceX capsule has splashed down back to Earth carrying four astronauts from the International Space Station, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[218978,64,63,485,128,285,12331],"class_list":["post-414509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astronaut-medical-evacuation","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-california","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}