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Medical emergency on the Space Station!

Yesterday NASA announced that it was canceling a planned spacewalk due to a medical emergency with one of the astronauts that arose suddenly. They said the astronaut was "stable" and declined to reveal the nature of the medical issue due to confidentiality.

https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/...spacewalk/

Then this morning NASA put out an update that said the single astronaut is still stable and said that they are evaluating all possibilities, including terminating the Crew 11 mission early and returning everyone to Earth in the Crew Dragon that is already at the station.

https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/...-update-2/

Later this morning, NASA announced a live press conference regarding the Space Station at 5 PM EST (2 PM Pacific) to include the NASA Administrator (Jared), an Associate Administrator and NASA's Chief Health and Medical Officer.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-t...ate-today/

Youtube livestream will be here

https://www.youtube.com/live/ffcV3jCwwPk

Press briefing just concluded. Crew 11 will indeed be returning early. That will leave two Russians and an American on the Station with a Soyuz for them to return in if that becomes necessary. Crew 12 was already scheduled for about a month away and can be brought forward without much problem. Jared says that bringing it forward shouldn't conflict with the Artemis II campaign, set to launch next month.

They were very reluctant to say anything about the stricken astronaut's symptoms, but I got the impression that they are symptoms that may or may not indicate something serious, so the astronaut should be in a hospital setting where the proper tests can be conducted and treatment provided if need be. They did mention microgravity several times, so that might be a complicating factor. They said that the astronaut should be able to tolerate reentry and landing without danger.

Both Jaxa and Roscosmos are in the loop and agree about Crew 11's early return. Crew 11 is two Americans (one female), one Japanese man and one Russian man. It's unknown which one is having the medical problems.

Jared says that this is not an emergency station evacuation scenario, it's simply the normal crew return flight moved forward a few weeks. They will splash down in the normal landing zone etc.

Jared was asked about hypothetical medical emergencies on the Moon or Mars, where quick evacuation to Earth is more difficult or impossible. He said that they are learning from all of these events and that's part of the value of the Space Station.

Crew 11 just splashed down safely. And I saw it streaking by as it reentered! Now I'm all pumped and can't sleep. I expected it to look like a meteor and it didn't, it was a bright orange light, not a fireball, and it had a really big contrail behind it.

Passing San Francisco