This screengrab from video offered by NASA TV exhibits the SpaceX Dragon capsule departing from the Worldwide House Station shortly after undocking with 4 NASA Crew-11 members inside on Wednesday.
AP/NASA
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AP/NASA
4 folks on NASA’s Crew-11 mission efficiently splashed down within the Pacific Ocean off San Diego of their SpaceX Dragon capsule after a virtually 10-hour journey from the Worldwide House Station, finishing the first medical evacuation from the orbiting lab.
The crew undocked from the station Wednesday at 5:20 p.m. EST because the ISS and capsule flew 260 miles south of Australia.
The splashdown at 3:41 a.m. EST Thursday beneath a cover of parachutes marks the top of the Crew-11 mission, which was reduce brief by a couple of month. It is the primary time in NASA’s historical past {that a} medical challenge prompted an early finish to an area mission. It is also the primary medical evacuation in over a quarter-century of steady human presence on the house station.
NASA has not disclosed the identify of the astronaut or the medical challenge on account of well being privateness.
The choice to carry dwelling the crew of NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan Aerospace Exploration Company astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov was made last week. NASA introduced one of many astronauts had a serious but stable condition that prompted the cancellation of a deliberate spacewalk final Thursday. The choice was made the following day to return the astronaut — together with the remainder of the crew — for medical analysis again on Earth. All 4 needed to return as a result of the capsule was their solely journey to and from the house station.
Their mission started on Aug. 1, 2025, with the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy House Heart in Florida. Since then, the crew has spent a complete of 167 days in house and 165 days onboard the house station, logging 2,672 orbits of the Earth — their journey tallying 70.8 million statute miles.
Their departure leaves the house station with simply three folks. Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev, together with NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, who arrived on the station in a Soyuz capsule on Nov. 27, 2025, only a few hours after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Since SpaceX started launching operational missions to the station in 2020, the Worldwide House Station has usually hosted an operational crew of seven.
The lowered crew means fewer experiments and lowered upkeep can happen on the ISS. SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission, the following crew rotation for the station, is about to launch no sooner than Feb. 15 from Florida’s House Coast, carrying NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European House Company astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
