NASA is bringing among the crew aboard the Worldwide House Station (ISS) again to Earth early because of medical considerations with one the astronauts.
That should not trigger any delays within the preparations to rollout and launch the company’s House Launch System (SLS) rocket for Artemis 2 — the primary crewed mission to the moon in over 50 years — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman mentioned Thursday (Jan. 8).
His reassurance of Artemis 2’s timeline, which is slated to roll to the launchpad for a liftoff no sooner than Feb. 5, comes amid NASA’s resolution to chop brief an ISS crew rotation because of medical considerations for the primary time ever.
On Wednesday (Jan. 7), NASA officers introduced that they had determined to cancel an upcoming spacewalk because of a medical concern with an undisclosed crew member. Hours later, the company indicated that it wasn’t ruling out an early finish to Crew-11’s mission, and confirmed that the unnamed crew member was in a steady, non-emergency situation. NASA officers finalized the choice to convey the astronauts residence in an announcement Thursday (Jan. 8).
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui, and Oleg Platonov of the Russian area company Roscosmos launched to the ISS atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Aug. 1, 2025. Ferried to the ISS aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour, the Crew-11 astronauts had been anticipated to hold out a six-month stint earlier than substitute astronauts on SpaceX’s upcoming Crew-12 mission rotated in.
Crew-12 is presently scheduled for a mid-February launch, with Crew-11 beforehand slated for departure a handful of days after their arrival. Their early departure, nevertheless, has raised questions of NASA’s means to deal with the logistics of sandwiching the Crew-11 return and Crew-12’s launch round what’s arguably NASA’s largest mission in over 50 years.
Artemis 2 is the second installment for NASA’s Artemis program, which goals to return astronauts to the moon to determine a everlasting presence on the lunar floor. This system’s first launch, Artemis 1, launched in November 2022, and flew an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit on a mission that lasted about one month.
Artemis 2 will likely be Orion’s first enterprise into area with astronauts aboard, and can fly people across the moon for the primary time since 1972 and the top of NASA’s Apollo missions. The spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian House Company astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a roughly 10-day mission as soon as across the moon and again, and can set the stage for Artemis 3 — the mission supposed to land astronauts again on the moon’s floor.
Each missions have confronted years-long delays, and NASA’s bold objective to launch Artemis 2 throughout its first window of alternative is not being thwarted by current occasions aboard the ISS.
Ideally, simply as in a nominal crew turnover, NASA would like to launch Crew-12 previous to Crew-11’s departure. Such overlaps have been commonplace process for the reason that station’s continuous occupation for greater than twenty years of operation. And even with SLS rollout anticipated inside the subsequent two weeks, NASA is investigating the likelihood to maneuver Crew-12’s launch up the calendar to keep away from the crew hole in low Earth orbit.
“We’re nonetheless evaluating what earlier dates can be achievable, if any, for Crew-12,” Isaacman mentioned. “We’ll have a look at … all of our commonplace course of to organize for Crew-12, and search for alternative if we are able to convey it in whereas concurrently conducting our Artemis two marketing campaign.”
