After medical issue, SpaceX Crew-11 departs space station headed for overnight splashdown

NASA gave the go and the SpaceX Crew-11 mission departed the International Space Station on Wednesday, headed for an overnight splashdown back on Earth in the Pacific Ocean.

The four crew of NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, commander, and Mike Fincke, pilot, along with JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, both mission specialists, are cutting their mission short after one of them suffered a medical issue last week.

The four climbed on board Crew Dragon Endeavour, closing the hatch at 3:29 p.m., and undocked from the orbiting laboratory flying about 260 miles above the Earth at 5:20 p.m. Landing is targeted for 3:41 a.m. Thursday after about a 10 1/2-hour flight home, looking to splash down off the coast of San Diego.

NASA will livestream the landing beginning at 2:15 a.m. Streams are available on NASA+, Amazon Prime and NASA’s YouTube channel.

The deorbit burn will take place at 2:51 a.m. to bring the spacecraft into the atmosphere enduring temperatures of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit and slowing from 17,500 mph to a gentle parachute-assisted landing of about 15 mph. The spacecraft will then be hoisted onto a recovery ship and the crew will be assisted out, checked out medically and flown back to land.

The quartet launched from Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 1, 2025, and were originally slated to stay on board the space station through late February, only leaving after their relief, Crew-12, arrived the station.

NASA officials opted to bring the four home early, though, after the medical issue, but did not say which of the crew it affected. It did force the postponement of a spacewalk last week that was to have involved Fincke and Cardman. After the incident, NASA said the crew member was stable, and all four reported being in good health ahead of Wednesday’s departure.

When they land, they will have completed 167 days in space and orbited the Earth more than 2,600 times.

While Cardman, on her first spaceflight, is commander of Crew-11, Fincke, amid his fourth trip to space, had last December assumed command of the entire station leading what is now Expedition 74, and only relinquished it during a ceremony Monday.

“It’s bittersweet,” Fincke said. “I wish it were longer, but we have what we have, and it was really — it was a lot of fun.”

Platonov, 39, like Cardman, 38, is on his rookie spaceflight while Yui, 55, flew once before to the station. Fincke, 58, was originally chosen as an astronaut candidate in 1996. His four space missions included the last flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2011. With this mission’s completion Fincke moves into fourth place on the all-time NASA list for cumulative days in space with 549. That puts him 20th among all space agencies.

Cardman became the final member of her 2017 astronaut class to make it to space.

“Our timing of this departure is unexpected, but what was not surprising to me was how well this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other,” Cardman said.

With their departure, the space station population dropped from seven to three. Staying behind are NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived to the station on a Soyuz spacecraft last November. They will be joined by the four members of Crew-12, which is currently slated to launch no earlier than Feb. 15 from the Space Coast.

“We’re leaving you all with a lot of work, but also with a lot of knowledge, knowing that you guys are really going to do super well,” Fincke said.

New commander Kud-Sverchkov’s first command was for the seven to have a group hug, following the same first command Fincke had given when he took over.

“I have no doubts we’re going to work. We’re going to continue working as as a family, as a team,” Kud-Sverchkov said.

The station has been continuously occupied for more than 25 years, and ran with just three-person crews from 2011-2020 for the most part after the end of the Space Shuttle Program. SpaceX then brought launches from the U.S. back when it flew test mission Demo-2 in May 2020, and has since performed 11 crew rotation missions to the station, so the normal ISS crew complement was seven.

SpaceX has opted to bring its Crew Dragon spacecraft home a few times before the relief crew arrives, but normally there’s a few days of handoff where the station population climbs to 11.

NASA and SpaceX remain in discussions to see if Crew-12’s timetable could be pushed up. When it does fly, it will be making only the second ever human spaceflight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 after Crew-9’s debut in 2024. All four of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launches in 2025 came from neighboring KSC. Flying up are NASA astronauts commander Jessica Meir and pilot Jack Hathaway, mission specialist and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot and mission specialist and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the operations around Crew-12 would not compete with the potential launch of the Artemis II mission, which could fly as early as Feb. 6 from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-B.

“These are would be totally separate campaigns. At this point, we would as we mentioned before, we’re still evaluating what earlier dates would be achievable, if any, for Crew-12,” he said. “So right now, we’re going to look at all operations, all of our standard processes to prepare for Crew-12, and look for opportunities if we can bring it in while simultaneously conducting our Artemis II campaign. There’s no reason to believe at this point in time that there’d be any overlap, that we’d have to deconflict for.”

NASA plans to roll out the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the pad Saturday, with the roughly 4-mile, 12-hour trip beginning as early as 7 a.m. On arrival, the launch hardware will endure more tests ahead of what would be the first crewed Artemis mission. If successful, it could line up launch in early February, although NASA has carved out launch opportunities for early March and April as well.

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