CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The International Space Station returned to full strength with Saturday\u2019s arrival of four new astronauts to replace colleagues who bailed early because of health concerns.<\/p>\n
SpaceX delivered the U.S., French and Russian astronauts a day after launching them from Cape Canaveral, Fla. <\/p>\n
Last month\u2019s medical evacuation was NASA\u2019s first in 65 years of human spaceflight. One of four astronauts launched by SpaceX last summer suffered what officials described as a serious health issue, prompting their hasty return. That left only three crew members to keep the place running \u2014 one American and two Russians \u2014 prompting NASA to pause spacewalks and trim research.<\/p>\n
Moving in for eight to nine months are NASA\u2019s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, France\u2019s Sophie Adenot and Russia\u2019s Andrey Fedyaev. Meir, a marine biologist, and Fedyaev, a former military pilot, have lived up there before. During her first station visit in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk.<\/p>\n
Adenot, a military helicopter pilot, is only the second French woman to fly in space. Hathaway is a captain in the U.S. Navy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBonjour!\u201d Adenot called out once the capsule docked to the space station 277 miles up. <\/p>\n
A couple of hours later, the hatches swung open and the seven space travelers hugged and exchanged exuberant high fives. \u201cLet\u2019s get rolling,\u201d Meir said.<\/p>\n
NASA has refused to divulge the identity of the astronaut who fell ill in orbit on Jan. 7 or detail what happened, citing medical privacy. The ailing astronaut and the three others returned to Earth more than a month sooner than planned. They spent their first night back on Earth at the hospital before returning to Houston.<\/p>\n
The space agency said it did not alter its preflight medical checks for their replacements.<\/p>\n
Dunn writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The International Space Station returned to full strength with Saturday\u2019s arrival of four new astronauts to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[154791,23642,14900,3146,158725,158724,1221,154792,127812,54859,4486,3323,111,139,69,8105,147,148501,49975],"class_list":{"0":"post-284804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-andrey-fedyaev","9":"tag-astronaut","10":"tag-crew","11":"tag-earth","12":"tag-fla-last-month","13":"tag-former-military-pilot","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-jack-hathaway","16":"tag-jessica-meir","17":"tag-medical-evacuation","18":"tag-month","19":"tag-nasa","20":"tag-new-zealand","21":"tag-newzealand","22":"tag-nz","23":"tag-russia","24":"tag-science","25":"tag-sophie-adenot","26":"tag-space-station"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}