Astronaut released from International Space Station pays tribute to ‘amazing teammates’
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There is no more mystery about which astronaut experienced a health problem aboard the International Space Station last month, leading to NASA’s first medical evacuation.
Astronaut Mike Fincke, 58, revealed that he was the one who needed help in a statement published by NASA on Wednesday.
“On Jan. 7, while on the International Space Station, I experienced a medical incident that required immediate attention from my amazing teammates,” Fincke said in a statement.
Fincke said he was “doing very well” and was being treated “after the flight,” although he did not specify what medical problem caused the need to be evacuated from the hospital.
Fincke was part of the four-person SpaceX Crew-11 mission, along with NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
Although officials at the time described the situation as stable, it was so serious that the decision was made to terminate the mission so that Fincke could perform advanced diagnostics and treatment on Earth – resulting in NASA’s first medical evacuation in 65 years of human spaceflight.
That left just three crew members to keep the ISS running — one American and two Russians — prompting NASA to pause spacewalks and scale back research until a new crew is launched earlier this month.
But NASA declined to reveal which of the four is sick, and what the problem was, citing medical confidentiality.
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Fincke and his team members had their work cut short by about a month, dropping what was supposed to be a trip lasting at least six months after the launch in August.
Fincke told reporters in January, less than a week after the crew returned to Earth, that the crew had used the onboard ultrasound machine shortly after the health problem appeared on Jan. 7 – the day before a planned space flight that was suddenly canceled.
Astronauts had used the device extensively to monitor changes in their bodies while living in weightlessness, “so when we had this emergency, the ultrasound machine came in very handy,” he said at the time.
It was so useful that Fincke said there should be one in every future space plane. “It helped a lot,” she said.
In a statement Wednesday, Fincke thanked his fellow members for their “work and dedication,” and thanked health workers at a hospital near San Diego, where workers poured in on January 15.
“Spaceflight is an incredible privilege and sometimes it reminds us of how human we are,” Fincke said.
