On Thursday NASA revealed it is considering bringing crew members onboard the International Space Station (ISS) back to Earth earlier than planned after an unidentified astronaut experienced a medical issue on Wednesday.
NASA has said the crew member is in stable condition.
“Safely conducting our missions is our highest priority, and we are actively evaluating all options, including the possibility of an earlier end to Crew-11’s mission,” the agency said in a statement. More updates are expected in the next 24 hours, it said.
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The Crew-11 mission consists of NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui. The quartet launched on August 1, 2025, onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, and they were expected to remain in orbit for at least six and a half months. That would place their scheduled return in mid-February 2026, following the arrival of the Crew-12 mission.
The announcement that NASA is considering changing that schedule came after the agency delayed a planned spacewalk from the ISS just hours before two astronauts were due to exit the orbiting laboratory.
In another statement, the agency said that “a medical concern with a crew member that arose Wednesday afternoon” caused the postponement. The announcement came just four hours after NASA reported that the space station crew had concluded preparations for the endeavor, which is more formally known as an extravehicular activity, or EVA. Citing medical privacy, NASA has not provided any details about which astronaut is affected or the nature of the situation.
Fincke and Cardman were due to exit the station around 8 A.M. EST on January 8 for a six-and-a-half-hour project to install and prepare some new hardware for the future rollout of a solar array. If time had permitted, they were also expected to take photographs of hardware and to sample of microorganisms living on the station’s exterior.
The four Crew-11 astronauts are joined on the ISS by NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived in November 2025.
Editor’s Note (1/8/26): This story was updated to include new information from NASA regarding this situation. This is a breaking news story and may be updated further.
