All four Crew-8 astronauts received medical evaluations at Florida Hospital in Florida after returning from space aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon, and one astronaut was forced to lie down due to an unspecified health problem.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission touched down at 3:29 a.m. ET Friday from Pensacola, Florida, following a nearly eight-month stay on the International Space Station (ISS). The crew returned to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that “entered normally,” according to NASA. Instead of heading to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the four-person team flew together to Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital Pensacola in Florida for evaluation.
“The crew exited the Dragon spacecraft and entered the recovery vehicle for a routine post-flight check,” NASA wrote in a blog update. “Out of an abundance of caution, all members of the group were rushed to the facility together.” Three crew members left the hospital and one unnamed astronaut stayed to sleep, possibly due to a health problem. The identity and status of the astronauts are not shared by NASA to protect their privacy.
Hospital officials released the astronaut the next day, allowing him to return to the Johnson Space Center to continue routine post-flight rehabilitation with the rest of the crew. NASA confirmed that the astronaut is “in good health.” It is unclear whether the medical problem was brought on by the stay in orbit or the return trip to Earth, or perhaps something unrelated to their time in space. However, the fact that all four crew members were taken to the hospital for further evaluation seems to suggest that this medical issue was somehow related to the trip back to Earth.
Crew-8 included NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. The four astronauts spent a total of 232 days aboard the ISS, traveling nearly 100 million kilometers and completing 3,760 orbits around Earth while conducting scientific research, according to NASA.
NASA Crew-8 was launched to the ISS on March 4, but their return to Earth was delayed for several weeks due to Hurricane Milton, which forced the space agency to abandon the relaunch attempt on October 7. – In August, however, NASA extended the mission to maintain the spacecraft Dragon stands by the ISS for stranded Starliner astronauts in case of an emergency.
The Boeing space shuttle launched astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in June, but the empty Starliner returned to Earth in September, abandoning its crew after it was deemed unfit to return astronauts to Earth. In the event of an emergency on the ISS, the two astronauts would need another room on the Dragon spacecraft to take refuge in space.
Delays in the crew’s return resulted in the astronauts spending about eight months in space rather than the original timeline of six months. Space is a harsh environment that affects the human body, affecting bone and muscle density, vision, and causing astronauts to be vulnerable to disease on the ISS. There is clearly more research that needs to be done on astronaut health and ways to reduce the harmful effects of space on the human body before astronauts take the long journey to Mars.
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