Abundance of caution

SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts taken to medical facility ‘out of an abundance of caution,’ NASA says

By Jackie Wattles

Three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut were unexpectedly transferred to a medical facility after their splashdown aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in the early hours of Friday morning.

The four-person crew, which spent nearly eight months aboard the International Space Station before landing in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday at 3:29 a.m. ET, had a “safe splashdown and recovery,” according to NASA.

However, the astronauts “were taken to a local medical facility for additional evaluation,” NASA news chief Cheryl Warner said in a statement from the space agency shared at 8 a.m. ET.

“The crew exited the Dragon spacecraft onto a recovery ship for standard post-flight medical evaluations,” Warner said. “Out of an abundance of caution, all crew members were flown to the facility together.”

Warner confirmed at 9 a.m. ET that the crew was still at the medical facility, but did not provide details about the nature of the medical checks.

The four crewmates — including NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps and Alexander Grebenkin of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos — make up the staff of Crew-8, a routine mission to the International Space Station that was carried out by SpaceX on behalf of NASA.

All four astronauts had been seen smiling and waving as they exited their Crew Dragon capsule and boarded a recovery ship during a livestream of their splashdown overnight.

Officials at NASA also did not offer any indication of medical issues during a 5 a.m. ET news briefing.

“Right now the crew is doing great. They are going to spend a little bit of time on the recovery vessel going through their their medical checks,” said Richard Jones, NASA’s deputy manager of the Commercial Crew Program, at the time.

Crew-8’s return

Extensive medical checkouts are routine after long-duration missions to space. And Crew-8’s stay was a bit longer than most astronauts traveling to the ISS.

Routinely trips typically last roughly five to seven months.

“(Crew-8 was) the longest duration in space for a US crewed vehicle at 235 days,” Jones said.

The Crew-8 team, which launched into space on March 4, faced repeated delays in their return home for a variety of reasons. Among the roadblocks were schedule changes related to issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which had carried two NASA astronauts to the space station on a test flight in June but was deemed too risky to return its crew back to Earth.

NASA ultimately chose to return the Boeing spacecraft home empty and moved Starliner’s astronauts onto the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, delaying that mission’s launch and thus Crew-8’s return.

Additional weather delays also pushed the Crew-8 astronauts’ return into late October.