Crew-11 undocks from the ISS and begins its return to Earth with a sick crew member

Miami.- The NASA’s Crew-11 mission capsule successfully undocked this Wednesday from the International Space Station (ISS) and began its anticipated return to Earth due to a medical emergency affecting one of its four crew members. The undocking occurred at 5:20 PM EST (22:20 GMT), after which SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour capsule began its return trajectory, with a planned journey of about 11 hours. The American space agency predicts that the splashdown will occur in the early hours of Thursday at 8:41 GMT (3:41 EST), in the ocean off the coast of San Diego (California), if weather conditions permit.

You can also read:NASA considers bringing forward the return of Crew-11 due to an astronaut’s health problems and postpones spacewalk

NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke; Kimiya Yui, from the Japanese space agency JAXA; and Oleg Platonov, from the Russian space agency Roscosmos, who in a photo released last weekend looked in apparent good health, spent 167 days in space, NASA detailed during the broadcast. «The day of our return to Earth has finally arrived», Yui wrote on social media today. NASA has said that it will not reveal the identity of the sick astronaut for privacy reasons. This is the first time that a permanent operating ISS mission has returned prematurely – “a few weeks” earlier, according to NASA – due to the illness of one of its members.

The decision to bring forward the ‘splasdown’ several weeks ahead of schedule marks an unprecedented event in the history of the ISS, permanently inhabited since 2000.

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At the time of undocking, seven people were on board the orbital complex, four of whom belonged to Crew-11.