At a press conference, former ISS Commander Mike Fincke said that Crew 11’s evacuation of the space station made him feel more confident about manned space exploration.
By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanne Brner
NASA
Just a week after their unprecedented return Arriving on Earth following a medical issue aboard the International Space Station, the four members of Crew-11 presented a united front, indicating that the future of human spaceflight was bright.
At a news conference Wednesday, former ISS commander and NASA astronaut Mike Fincke said the way the crew and ground teams came together to return the four astronauts safely to Earth showed how well-prepared humans must continue to explore space.
“The way we handled everything from nominal operations to this unplanned operation really bodes well for future exploration,” Fincke said. “So when we prepare for Artemis, I’m very optimistic.”
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Fincke is one of four returning crew members – the others are NASA’s Zena Cardman, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov – who were returned to Earth weeks ahead of schedule. On Wednesday, the four men gave few details about what exactly happened to trigger their early return to Earth—the first in the history of the ISS.
Fincke said the problem arose as he and Cardman were preparing to undertake a spacewalk — which would have been Cardman’s first — outside the ISS. Fincke also said the portable ultrasound machine on the ISS was used to address the medical problem.
“So when we had this emergency, the ultrasound machine came in very handy,” Fincke said, adding the caveat that the ISS does not have the capacity to host larger imagers, such as magnetic resonance imaging machines.
“We try to make sure that everyone, before they fly, is really not prone to surprises. But sometimes things happen, and surprises happen,” Fincke said.
JAXA’s Yui praised her international colleagues for their response to the medical problem. “We can handle any type of difficult situation,” he said. “It’s actually a very, very good experiment for the future of human spaceflight.”
Beyond low Earth orbit, Cardman said she doesn’t think future ISS crews will necessarily need new or additional training in light of what happened to Crew-11. But, she added, missions beyond the ISS, to the Moon or even further into space, pose a different question. “I think the further we go beyond low Earth orbit, having tools on board to diagnose and treat a myriad of situations will be a really interesting problem to solve,” she said.
Cardman highlighted the pioneering role of the ISS in human spaceflight. Looking ahead to future space and scientific exploration expeditions, “we will need astronauts who will be the eyes, ears and laboratory notebooks for researchers on the ground,” she said.
“We won’t always be scientific experts. In fact, we rarely will be,” Cardman said. “The ISS has been a great testing ground for how we advance science.”
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