NASA has announced it will return the four-member Crew-11 mission from the International Space Station about a month earlier than planned after one astronaut developed a serious but stable medical condition.
The space agency has not identified the crew member or disclosed details of the illness, citing medical privacy, and stressed the move is precautionary rather than an emergency.
A scheduled spacewalk was cancelled earlier in the week due to the same concern, and officials say the condition is not linked to station operations or an injury.
It marks the first time in the ISS’s 25-year history that a mission has been cut short for medical reasons, with one US astronaut remaining in orbit alongside two Russian cosmonauts while some experiments and maintenance work are expected to be delayed until a replacement crew arrives.
