Four astronauts head home in Nasa’s first medical evacuation from space station

An astronaut in need of care from doctors has departed the International Space Station with three crewmates in Nasa’s first medical evacuation.

The four returning astronauts – from the US, Russia and Japan – are aiming for an early Thursday morning splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego with SpaceX.

The decision cuts short their mission by more than a month.

“Our timing of this departure is unexpected,” Nasa astronaut Zena Cardman said before the return trip, “but what was not surprising to me was how well this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other.”

Officials refused to identify the astronaut who needed care last week and would not divulge the health concerns.

The ailing astronaut is “stable, safe and well cared for”, outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke said earlier this week via social media.

“This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists,” he said.

Launched in August, Ms Cardman, Mr Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov should have remained on the space station until late February.

But on January 7, Nasa abruptly cancelled the next day’s spacewalk by Ms Cardman and Mr Fincke and later announced the crew’s early return.

Officials said the health problem was unrelated to spacewalk preparations or other station operations, but offered no other details, citing medical privacy. They stressed it was not an emergency situation.

Nasa said it would stick to the same entry and splashdown procedures at flight’s end, with the usual assortment of medical experts on board the recovery ship in the Pacific.

It was another middle-of-the-night crew return for SpaceX, coming less than 11 hours after undocking from the space station.

Nasa said it was not yet known how quickly all four would be flown from California to Houston, home to Johnson Space Centre and the base for astronauts.

One US and two Russian astronauts remain on board the orbiting lab, just one and a half months into an eight-month mission that began with a Soyuz rocket lift-off from Kazakhstan.

Nasa and SpaceX are working to move up the launch of a fresh four-person crew from Florida, currently targeted for mid-February.

Computer modelling predicted a medical evacuation from the space station every three years, but Nasa has not had one in its 65 years of human spaceflight.

The Russians have not been as fortunate. In 1985, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Vasyutin came down with a serious infection or related illness on board his country’s Salyut 7 space station, prompting an early return. A few other Soviet cosmonauts encountered less serious health issues that shortened their flights.

It was the first spaceflight for Ms Cardman, 38, a biologist and polar explorer who missed out on spacewalking, as well as Mr Platonov, 39, a former fighter pilot with the Russian Air Force who had to wait a few extra years to get to space because of an undisclosed health issue.

Ms Cardman should have launched last year but was bumped to make room on the way down for Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were stuck nearly a year at the space station because of Boeing’s capsule problems.

Nasa officials had said it was riskier to leave the astronaut in space without proper medical attention for another month than to temporarily reduce the size of the space station crew by more than half.

Until SpaceX delivers another crew, Nasa said it will have to stand down from any routine or even emergency spacewalks, a two-person job requiring back-up help from crew inside the orbiting complex.