On January 15th, 2026, NASA’s Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA’s Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos’ Oleg Platnov splashed down early off the coast of San Diego into the Pacific Ocean, ending a weeklong effort to return an unnamed crew member home early to be checked out due to a medical issue. 

This all began when a scheduled spacewalk had been cancelled at the last minute, which led to the reasoning behind the cancellation when NASA revealed that a crew member had become ill hours after the cancellation. 

On Wednesday afternoon, the astronaut crew headed out from the International Space Station for a 10-hour journey on their way back to Earth.  Crew-11 splashed down in the SpaceX capsule around 3:40 am off the coast of San Diego, into the water, and were able to witness dolphins swimming nearby upon their arrival. 

The crew members had been in space for 167 days, and since that was a relatively long period of time aboard the ISS, medical equipment like gurneys was present upon their arrival to help with mobility as they adjusted to gravity again. Although one of them returned for medical reasons, all four crew members were seen with smiles on their faces and waving their hands to the cameras upon touchdown. Caden Johnson (12) expresses his concerns towards “how astronauts learn how to handle gravity issues and how they are still able to move and do things like wave and walk upon landing. I oftentimes see them pulled out in wheelchairs, and I completely understand those are usually for people who are in space for longer, but it makes me wonder what exactly causes astronauts to lose movement and functionality in space and I find it very interesting how in space they automatically learn to function differently and on Earth it is a massive recovery process to come back to normal.”

Although four members of Crew-11 headed out from the International Space Station, NASA’s Chris Williams, and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev are to stay behind to keep the orbital lab running until four more astronauts can arrive on Crew-12. 

The decision to return the crew to Earth was ultimately made after the medical condition had been monitored in orbit for quite some time, but since the medical resources available in orbit were not enough to clear the patient, they believed it was best to take advantage of the resources on Earth to treat the crew member with the proper care. Chelsey Natividad (12) expresses how “I constantly forget that astronauts are constantly up in space, and I never really took into account issues like medical needs. I also found it oddly fascinating how they do have medical resources up in space, and even though they are not as advanced, I still find it very fascinating and important. When I was younger, I used to learn a lot more about astronauts and now I feel that they are hardly talked about, so this matter was very fascinating and makes me wonder more about astronauts and their needs while in space”. The recovery process for not only the concerned patient, but the rest of the astronauts as well, includes them all being transported to a nearby hospital to undergo medical examinations and evaluations, and going to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for post-flight testing and rehabilitation. 

Although NASA has not identified the crew member and shared any details regarding their condition, NASA officials say that the health problems were not related to any type of injury during space operations, but rather it was just a medical condition that doctors and medical professionals wanted to assess that could not be done using the equipment aboard the station.