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NASA announces unprecedented return of sick ISS astronaut and crew
- HardwareLust 10mo agoDid NASA say when they're coming back? The article didn't mention it. Should also mention NASA is trying to move up the launch of Crew 12 to cover some of the gap.
- dfcab 10mo agoAll I know is that SpaceX said dragon and crew-11 would undock no earlier than Wednesday, Jan 14.
- daemonologist 10mo agoCurrent schedule is departure Wednesday, splashdown Thursday morning: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2026/01/09/nasa-spacex-set-target-date-for-crew-11s-return-to-earth-2/ https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2026/01/09/nasa-sp... Reentry should be visible from large parts of the west coast (if they stick to this schedule).
- HardwareLust 10mo agoThanks!
- bookofjoe 10mo ago>NASA has said it will announce a target return date in the coming days.
- nubg 10mo agoWhy be so secretive? This is not a military mission. These missions cost a lot of taxpayer money (money well spend you may argue), but we deserve full transparency. You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy. We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
- kccqzy 10mo agoPeople in general expect privacy when it comes to medical issues.
- whateverboat 10mo agoMay be it would be better to have a full diagnosis after splashdown?
- daeken 10mo agoThe astronaut in question may choose to disclose that they had the medical emergency and possibly its nature, but it seems wholly reasonable to not single them out (when it affects the whole mission) or disclose their medical status.
- okdood64 10mo agoDisagree; this is completely taxpayer funded and we deserve to know every detail relevant to mission status. In this scenario knowing what illness and why it's grounds for a return is very relevant. That said, I can see NASA delaying information release to figure out a good strategy for it while still respecting any wishes of the sick astronaut with regards to disclosure.
- pockybum522 10mo agoWhat a strange take. Does this also apply to every soldier in the armed forces? Seems your criteria is equally applicable there. The relevant people that can do the research and write future policies based on the data obviously will have the information. Not sure what good you think that you personally having it can do.
- okdood64 10mo agoA single soldier having a medical issue generally doesn't cancel a multi-month mission costing some X large sum of money, requiring another Y large sum of money to even finish cancelling it (returning their unit home). Therefore it's not relevant and not needed for the public to know.
- Buttons840 10mo agoRelated question. Have transmittable diseases spread in space? What examples do we know of?
- Klathmon 10mo agoThere have been a few instances, IIRC there was an Apollo mission that had a head cold spread among the whole crew. But that's unlikely to be the case here because they've been up there isolated for over 6 months now
- perihelions 10mo agoThis describes NASA's pre-flight quarantines since Apollo 14, and makes (very brief) references to in-flight diseases (and apparent transmission) prior to Apollo 14 ("upper respiratory infection"; "viral gastroenteritis"), https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ochmo-tb-006-health-stabilization-program.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ochmo-tb-006... ("Health Stabilization Program (HSP)")
- lostmsu 10mo agoAFAIK no one have died in space from medical issues yet. Only accidents.
- ACS_Solver 10mo agoTechnically there has only been one fatal accident in space, the Soyuz 11 failure which killed the crew of three. That occurred above the Karman line, all other spaceflight related fatalities were at much lower altitudes or on the ground.
- echoangle 10mo agoThe other one that comes close is Columbia which broke up at around 60 km.
- eps 10mo agoThere was one cosmonaut who died shortly after emergency return to the Earth. I think it was in the 90s, but maybe eariler.
- geor9e 10mo agoArticle about how the return capsule works: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52840482 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52840482
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- heyflyguy 10mo agoIt's great we can bring them down. What a terrifying experience to have a medical issue on the space station. Kidney stone? Ruptured appendix? intestinal blockage? How could you keep calm so far away!
- NooneAtAll3 10mo agowhatever is the cause, it is not immediate - or they would've been on the ground couple days ago so no, not appendix
- xeonmc 10mo agoMaybe testicular torsion triggered by zero-G conditions?
- alphager 10mo agoThat's a "needs to be in the OR in 6 hours" situation; no way they waited several days for it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo agoPregnancy?
- ninkendo 10mo agoThis is what I keep thinking. - Theres a 38 year old woman in the crew - It’s a medical condition that likely wasn’t present when the mission started 4 months ago - It’s serious enough to return the crew, but not serious enough that they must do so immediately I guess we’ll find out in 9 months? (Or not…)
- roryirvine 10mo agoAs I understand it, the studies done with mice suggest that microgravity prevents normal embryo development. The ISS should therefore be regarded as a teratogenic environment, and I'd be shocked if women of childbearing age weren't prescribed highly-effective contraceptives (ie. IUD/IUS or implant) before, during, and after spaceflight.
- bahmboo 10mo ago[flagged]
- mrpippy 10mo agoHow are they explaining away the fact that the Japanese male astronaut asked for a consult with the flight surgeon on the public loop (a video which NASA has since removed from YouTube)?
- add-sub-mul-div 10mo agoThere's no basis to such claims in the first place and they don't engage with substantive discussion. It's just more flooding of the zone.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- deepsun 10mo agoThis is the first time I hear that. On HN, no less. Your post seems to be kinda fighting against it, but what it does is actually creates the narrative it seems to be fighting against. Otherwise I'd never hear it.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- ls612 10mo agoI remember reading about all of the foibles of Apollo 7 and how that was caused by the astronauts all getting a head cold and being miserable and irritable, or how Frank Borman got so space sick on Apollo 8 he recorded a secret message in the data dump for the doctor to bypass the capcom, and I’m curious how this now became a pseudo-political issue.
- bitshiftfaced 10mo ago> certain groups of online warriors are convinced she is the one who is sick because of the "women are weak and can't do man work" trope. Care to point to anything specific that leads you to believe this? > So keep that in mind when people are demanding transparency. Why should the (possible?) existence of online groups have any bearing on public policy like this? Probably for many policy decisions, we can find some online group that would spin it a certain way in their minds. That doesn't mean we let it influence our decisions one way or the other. Or to be precise, not any more than what the proportion of the voting population they make up would imply.
- NooneAtAll3 10mo ago[flagged]
- fleroviumna 10mo ago[dead]
- farceSpherule 10mo ago[dead]
- londons_explore 10mo agoThe ISS is a good example of a fully isolated environment. No new bacteria or viruses arrive there apart from spacecraft arrivals. I've been curious for a while what human health would look like if there was a small group of people isolated for many decades. Would they effectively be disease free after the first few weeks? As well as removing flu and colds, might it also reduce things like heart disease and Alzheimer's which we have weak evidence are linked to transmissible diseases?
- CableNinja 10mo agoThe downside to doing that is that their immune system would be weak in the end. We survive cold and flu because we have had them before, but someone going many years without the yearly viruses would get hit 100x harder, even potentially dying.