Washington, January 9, 2026, 06:45 (EST)
- NASA is bringing the four-person Crew-11 mission back from the International Space Station early after a medical issue with one astronaut; the crew member is stable.
- The agency has not identified the astronaut or disclosed the condition, citing medical privacy.
- A planned spacewalk was called off and NASA officials said they were “erring on the side of caution.” 1
NASA has ordered the early return of its Crew-11 mission from the International Space Station after a crew member developed a “serious medical condition,” senior agency officials said. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the station lacks the capability to “diagnose and treat this properly,” in what officials described as the first such medical evacuation in the orbiting lab’s 25-year history. 2
The move matters because it exposes a hard limit of human spaceflight: the ISS has medical gear and links to doctors on the ground, but not the tools to fully work up a serious case. NASA’s Amit Kshatriya called the response “a textbook example” of crew training and said the agency has no spare, crew-ready capsule docked that would let one astronaut leave alone. 3
It also lands in the middle of a tight staffing and science calendar on the station, with fewer hands available if the four-person crew departs early. “It’s a significant problem,” Don Platt, a Florida Tech professor and former ISS engineer, told NPR, saying some research would likely have to wait. 4
NASA first flagged the situation on Wednesday when it scrubbed a spacewalk planned for Thursday by U.S. astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman. “Safely conducting our missions is our highest priority,” a NASA spokesperson said in a statement, adding the agency was weighing an earlier end to the mission. 5
Crew-11 is expected to come home in its SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California with recovery crews and flight surgeons standing by, Kshatriya said. He described the plan as a “controlled expedited return,” and noted that both the Crew Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz serve as on-station lifeboats — meaning crewmates ride home together. 6
Isaacman stressed it was “not an emergency de-orbit,” even as he pointed to the limits of onboard care. NASA’s chief health and medical officer, Dr. James Polk, said it was “not an operational issue” and cited the constraints of microgravity — near-weightlessness — and limited diagnostic hardware. 7
NASA said it will not name the astronaut or describe the medical problem, citing privacy, and said the crew member is stable. Polk said astronauts have been treated in orbit for problems such as toothaches and ear pain, but this is the agency’s first medical evacuation from the station. 8
But NASA has shared little about what went wrong, and the timing of any undocking — detaching from the station — will still need to line up with safe landing conditions. Spacewalks are high-risk jobs, and NASA has called them off before for issues as small as suit discomfort. 9
