NASA announced on Wednesday (January 7) that an extravehicular activity outside the International Space Station (ISS) was postponed and the crew returned early due to a medical issue in an astronaut.
The spacewalk was scheduled for 8 a.m. ET on Thursday (January 8) to complete preparations for the power channel where a new solar array will be installed on the ISS. American astronauts Mike Finke and Zena Cardman were scheduled to leave the space station in six-and-a-half hours on what would be Cardman’s first spacewalk. (Finke has already performed nine spacewalks.)
you may like
“These are situations that NASA and its partners have trained for and are preparing to perform safely,” a NASA spokesperson said in an email update Thursday.
Nevertheless, the agency confirmed that Finke, Cardman, and two other astronauts who are part of the ISS’s current four-person crew will be sent home early from their stay at the orbital outpost. “Completing the mission safely is our top priority and we are actively evaluating all options, including the possibility of early termination of Crew 11’s mission,” the spokesperson said.
Crew 11 arrived at the ISS on August 2, 2025. Finke and Cardman were to join Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency cosmonaut Kamiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov on the six-month mission, after which the astronauts would be replaced by Crew 12 as part of the space station’s regular staffing.
Crew-12’s launch is scheduled for mid-February. It’s unclear what Crew-11’s early return means for the ISS, as such a change in normal rotation is highly unusual, but the space station is currently home to other astronauts, including NASA’s Christopher Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Kudo Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, who arrived at the orbiting lab aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that destroyed its launch pad in November.
NASA has announced that it will announce a target return date within the next few days.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with confirmation from NASA that Crew-11 will return home sooner than originally planned.
Source link
