An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in Nasa’s first medical evacuation.

SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station .

“It’s so good to be home,” said Nasa astronaut Zena Cardman, the capsule commander.

It was an unexpected finish to a mission that began in August and left the orbiting lab with only one American and two Russians on board.

Nasa and SpaceX said they would try to move up the launch of a fresh crew of four; liftoff is currently targeted for mid-February.

Nasa’s Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke were joined on the return by Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov.

Officials have refused to identify the astronaut who had the health problem or explain what happened, citing medical privacy.

The affected crewmember "was and continues to be in stable condition," Nasa official Rob Navias said on Wednesday.

A video feed from Nasa showed American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui undocking from the ISS, after five months in space.

"First and foremost, we are all OK. Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for," Fincke, the pilot of SpaceX Crew-11, said previously on a 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. It's the right call, even if it's a bit bittersweet," he added in the post this week.

The Crew-11 quartet arrived at the ISS in early August and had been scheduled to stay onboard the space station until they were rotated out in mid-February with the arrival of the next crew.

James Polk, Nasa's chief health and medical officer, said "lingering risk" and a "lingering question as to what that diagnosis is" led to the decision to bring back the crew earlier than originally scheduled.

American astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived at the station in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, remained on the ISS.

The Russian Roscosmos space agency operates alongside Nasa on the outpost, and the two agencies take turns transporting a citizen of the other country to and from the orbiter — one of the few areas of bilateral cooperation that still endure between the United States and Russia. (Agencies)
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Last updated: 2026-01-15 HKT 16:56