Mysterious Circumstances
After touchdown again on Earth, a NASA astronaut was taken to the hospital for an unidentified well being subject — and there is nonetheless quite a bit we do not know in regards to the scenario.
In an update, NASA mentioned that each one 4 members of SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission from the Worldwide Area Station have been flown to a medical facility in Pensacola, Florida as a substitute of going again to Johnson Area Middle in Houston.
It is unclear which of the three astronauts on board the Crew Dragon capsule — Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps — was hospitalized as a result of NASA is defending their identification. (We are able to rule out Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin as a result of we all know the person works for NASA and never Roscomos.)
Although we do not know who was hospitalized or why they wanted medical consideration, NASA did say that the person is “in secure situation” and is remaining within the Pensacola hospital “as a precautionary measure.”
Past that, the company mentioned it won’t be publicizing any “particular particulars on the person’s situation” to guard their medical privateness and identification.
Fall For You
This is not the primary time a NASA astronaut has had a medical emergency quickly after returning to Earth.
Again in 2006, ISS mission specialist Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper collapsed twice on camera throughout her speech at a welcome dwelling ceremony only a day after touching down again on terra firma. Although she wasn’t hospitalized, she did must be escorted out of a facet door on the hangar the place the celebration was held in Houston, because the Associated Press reported at the time.
The astronaut’s husband Glenn Piper attributed his spouse’s wobble to a mixture of Texas warmth, pleasure, and the issue of reacclimating to Earth after spending almost two weeks in zero gravity.
As fellow astronaut and flight surgeon Smith Johnston advised the AP on the time, astronauts sometimes lose between 10 and 14 p.c of their blood quantity after they’re in house, and it could take a number of days to get all of it again.
“It’s like they simply went to the blood financial institution,” Johnston advised the information outlet.
As that just about two-decade-old debacle illustrates, house journey is brutal on the physique — and there might be any variety of explanation why the NASA astronaut who returned on the SpaceX Crew Dragon wanted medical consideration.
And hey, a minimum of they are not caught up there like their two coworkers who rode up on Boeing’s dubious Starliner and will not be capable of come again dwelling until February 2025.
Extra on astronautical happenings: MIT Scientists Invent Doctor Octopus-Style “SuperLimbs” for Stumbling Astronauts
