4 space station crewmates returning to Earth after medical issue cut mission short. What to know about the landing

Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, co-pilot Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov bid farewell to three crew members staying behind and floated into their Crew Dragon capsule, closing the ferry’s hatch at 3:29 p.m. EST on Wednesday.

“What an adventure we’ve had together,” Fincke radioed. “I think what I’m going to remember most is the camaraderie we’ve had across the planet that’s really symbolic of 25 years of continuous habitation aboard the space station. I’m glad we can all work together in space.”

Left to operate the space station are Soyuz 28 commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and his two crewmates, cosmonaut Sergey Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams.

Addressing her Expedition 74 cremmates, Cardman said she knows the space station is in good hands. She told ground controllers: “Your International Space Station is a testament to the power of cooperation, and it’s been an absolute privilege to take part in this endeavor … Crew 11 is coming home.”

After completing final preparations, the Crew Dragon undocked and slowly backed away from the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 5:20 p.m. Wednesday.

If all goes as planned, the capsule’s braking rockets will fire for 13 minutes and 15 seconds starting at 2:51 a.m. Thursday. The rockets will slow the ship by about 196 mph, just enough to drop the far side of the orbit into the atmosphere on the planned re-entry trajectory. After a northwest-to-southeast plunge across the Pacific Ocean, the crew is expected to splash down off the coast of Southern California at 3:41 a.m., closing out a 167-day stay in space.

After the Crew Dragon is hoisted aboard a SpaceX recovery ship, the crew will be helped out of the cramped ferry ship for initial medical checks before being flown to shore by helicopter and eventually back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

It’s unclear whether an examination or diagnostic work will be done in California first after one of the crew members experienced a medical issue last Thursday. NASA managers decided the issue was serious enough to bring the crew home early for a more extensive diagnostic evaluation. The astronaut in question was not identified and no details about the medical issue were revealed due to NASA’s strict medical privacy guidelines.

NASA’s chief medical officer said it was not an emergency return in any normal sense, but the decision marked the first time in NASA history that a spaceflight was cut short due to a medical concern.

Cardman and her crewmates, who launched to space Aug. 1, 2025, were originally expected to return to Earth around Feb. 20 to wrap up a 202-day mission.

In a long post on LinkedIn, Fincke said the crew was in good shape but he added the decision was “the right call.” All four astronauts looked to be in good spirits during a change of command ceremony Monday when Fincke officially turned the space station over to cosmonaut Kud-Sverchkov.

In a post on X Wednesday, Yui sent down pictures of snow-capped Mount Fuji, with the caption: “Hello! The day has finally arrived for our departure to Earth.”

“I haven’t had a chance to photograph daytime Japan recently, but at the very last moment, we passed over the Pacific side of Japan,” he said. “Mount Fuji bid us farewell, adorned with a touch of crimson makeup from the setting sun.”

The space station is continuously staffed by a crew of seven — Three launch and return to Earth aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft and four fly to and from the lab aboard NASA-managed SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry ships.

Both spacecraft serve as lifeboats during a crew’s long-duration space station stay. If a Soyuz or Crew Dragon flier gets sick or is seriously injured aboard the station, that person is joined by all of his or her crewmates for the flight back to Earth.

With that possibility in mind, NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, agreed to fly one NASA astronaut aboard each Soyuz and one Russian cosmonaut aboard each Crew Dragon. The seat-swap arrangement ensures that at least one Russian and one American are always on board the station to operate equipment in their respective modules should one crew ship depart early.

With the departure of Crew 11, Williams will be on his own managing the U.S. segment of the space station until Crew 12 arrives in February.

Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir, a space station veteran, rookies Jack Hathaway and European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and veteran cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev are officially scheduled for launch Feb. 15. However, NASA and SpaceX are looking into moving that launch up a few days amid work to ready a Space Launch System rocket for launch as early as Feb. 6 to send four astronauts on a looping fight around the moon.

The high-profile Artemis 2 mission will be the first to send astronauts to the vicinity of the moon in more than 50 years.