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\nThe crew launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in August<\/p>\n
NASA is considering a rare early return of its crew from the International Space Station over an unspecified medical issue involving one of the astronauts, after cancelling a planned spacewalk that had been scheduled for today, the agency said.<\/p>\n
A NASA spokeswoman said the astronaut with the medical concern, whom she did not identify, was in a stable condition on the orbiting laboratory.<\/p>\n
“Safely conducting our missions is our highest priority, and we are actively evaluating all options, including the possibility of an earlier end to Crew-11’s mission,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.<\/p>\n
NASA said in an earlier statement it was “monitoring a medical concern with a crew member that arose Wednesday afternoon”.<\/p>\n
Astronauts typically live in six to eight-month rotations on the ISS, with access to basic medical equipment and medications for some types of emergencies.<\/p>\n
\nThe crew launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in August<\/p>\n
The four-person Crew-11 crew includes US astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.<\/p>\n
They have been on the space station since launching from Florida in August and were scheduled to return around May this year.<\/p>\n
Mr Fincke, the station’s designated commander, and Ms Cardman, assigned as flight engineer, were scheduled to conduct a 6.5-hour spacewalk on Thursday to install hardware outside the station.<\/p>\n
NASA’s astronaut corps regards medical situations on the ISS as closely held secrets, and astronauts rarely acknowledge or describe publicly their medical conditions.<\/p>\n
Spacewalks are arduous and risky missions that require months of training, involving bulky spacesuits and carefully coordinated instructions while tethered to the ISS.<\/p>\n
NASA in 2024 called off a planned spacewalk last-minute because an astronaut experienced “spacesuit discomfort.”<\/p>\n
US astronaut Mark Vande Hei in 2021 called off his spacewalk over a pinched nerve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA is considering a rare early return of its crew from the International Space Station over an unspecified…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-234975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}