Crew-11 to Return Early from ISS Due to Medical Concern
NASA announced Friday, January 9th, that the SpaceX Crew-11 mission will return to Earth from the International Space Station on Wednesday, January 14th, over a month earlier than originally planned, due to an unspecified “medical situation” with one of its four crewmembers. The individual’s identity and exact condition have not been disclosed due to privacy considerations, though the agency stated that they are currently stable.
This news follows the sudden postponement of a spacewalk planned for Thursday, January 8th with astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke. That spacewalk, the first of the new year, was to prepare the orbital complex for the installation of its final pair of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs). The agency clarified that the medical issue was unrelated to preparations for the spacewalk, which is now delayed indefinitely.
This marks a first-of-its-kind situation for NASA. No comparable precedent exists for it in the ISS era; the only previous occurrences of medical evacuations from space occurred on the Soviet Salyut 5 and Salyut 7 stations in 1976 and 1985, respectively. In both of those cases, one or more crewmembers developed sudden medical conditions that necessitated an immediate return (nitric acid poisoning in the former case, and a likely prostate infection in the latter).
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, however, emphasized that this event did not quite rise to a level of such urgency. While an emergency deorbit remains an option available to the agency, crews have instead opted for a “controlled medical evacuation,” indicating that the crewmember’s condition does not call for a rushed return timeline.
Crew-11 launched from historic Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center with NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov on August 1st, 2025, delivering Crew Dragon Endeavour on its sixth visit to the ISS. It remains unclear whether or not the timeline for Crew-12, currently slated to launch in mid-February, can be moved forward to accommodate the early return, though Isaacman said the agency will review its available options.
NASA will continue to monitor the condition of the affected crewmember as they proceed towards undocking on January 14th, followed by splashdown in the early hours of January 15th.
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