'This is NASA at its finest': Crew-11 astronauts in good shape after smooth medical evacuation and splashdown, agency says

The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station are doing fine after the first-ever medical evaluation from the orbital lab, NASA says.

The Crew-11 mission was cut short when one of its members experienced a medical issue that required them to return to Earth for diagnosis treatment not available on the space station. NASA decided to bring the four crewmembers home weeks early, and a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour brought the crew of four home safely in a Pacific Ocean splashdown near San Diego on Thursday (Jan. 15). From the time it was announced, NASA has stressed that the medical issue was never an emergency, and reiterated that following splashdown.

In a post-landing press conference today, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the the crewmember of concern is "doing fine" and that the agency will share more information when appropriate. Isaacman added that the agency's ability to bring the crew home early and recover them safely shows what NASA does best. "While this was the first time we had to return crew slightly ahead of schedule, NASA was ready," Isaacman said. "This is exactly why we train, and this is NASA at its finest."

Issacman and NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Space Operations Joel Montalbano maintained a positive tone when discussing Crew-11's mission to the International Space Station and the evacuation that brought it to an end.

"This crew was in space just under 170 days. They performed a little less than 900 hours of science experiments on board. Those are hands-on science experiments, and that encompasses about 140 different experiments," Montalbano said.

"It benefits and teaches us for exploration what we're going to use in the Artemis program as we go back to the moon and to Mars."

Isaacman pointed out that traveling to space and back always comes with some uncertainty. "That is the nature of exploration," the NASA Administrator said. "Fundamentally, we're in space to learn. It's why NASA prepares for the unexpected  —so we are ready to respond decisively and safely.

"The successful return of Crew-11 is a direct result of that preparation."

Isaacman is an experienced spaceflyer himself, having flown on SpaceX's Inspiration 4, the first all-civilian spaceflight, and Polaris Dawn, which saw the first civilian spacewalk. Both missions were funded privately by Isaacman, a billionaire and entrepreneur who founded the Shift4 payment service before taking charge of NASA.

NASA now looks ahead to the launch of the Crew-12 mission, currently set for Feb. 15. That crew would have overlapped with Crew-11 and relieved them aboard the ISS, were it not for Crew-11's medical evacuation. NASA is also working to launch Artemis 2, the agency's first crewed mission to moon since 1972, as early as Feb. 6. Both missions will launch from pads on Florida's Space Coast.

The ISS is now crewed by just three people: NASA's Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev. It's the first time the space station has been crewed by just three astronauts in nearly two decades.