Medical Issue Forces Early Return of ISS Crew

UPDATE Jan 9, 2026 12:00 AM CST

NASA decided to cut a mission aboard the International Space Station short due to a medical issue one of the astronauts experienced. The unidentified crew member is now stable, but few details about their identity or the exact nature of the problem have been given. NASA said the situation was not an emergency, but that it is "erring on the side of caution for the crew member." The AP reports it's rare for NASA to end a mission early, and it's the first time an astronaut has been medically evacuated from ISS. The four-person crew, two Americans plus one astronaut from Japan and one from Russia, will return to Earth in the coming days. They arrived at the space station in August with plans to stay at least six months.

Jan 8, 2026 10:57 AM CST

NASA is thinking about bringing its International Space Station crew back early after a member developed a medical problem in orbit. The agency says it is "actively evaluating all options, including the possibility of an earlier end to Crew-11's mission," following the abrupt cancellation of a spacewalk that had been set for Thursday, Reuters reports. A NASA spokesperson said the affected astronaut, whose name and condition were not disclosed for privacy reasons, is stable aboard the station. NASA described the situation only as a "medical concern" that emerged Wednesday afternoon.

Crew-11 consists of Americans Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan's Kimiya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Cardman and Fincke were scheduled to carry out the spacewalk on Thursday, Space.com reports. The four launched in August from Florida and were expected to remain on the ISS until late February after the arrival of another four-person crew days earlier. If Crew-11 leaves early, three people will remain on the ISS: NASA's Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev. Space scientist Simeon Barber tells the BBC that the remaining crew would probably delay experiments until the new crew arrived.

"The space station is a big, complex feat of engineering, it's designed to be operated by a certain minimum level of crew," he says. "If Crew-11 were to return early, what the remaining crew would have to do is dial back on some of the more experimental work and focus more just on the housekeeping and keeping the station healthy, waiting for the full complement of crew to be restored." While the ISS carries basic medical gear and drugs and crews routinely stay six to eight months, serious problems are rare and handled quietly, reports Reuters. Spacewalks themselves are demanding operations that require heavy training and carry inherent risk; in recent years NASA has scrubbed them at the last minute for issues ranging from spacesuit discomfort to a pinched nerve.