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Four International Space Station unit members splashed down successful the Pacific Ocean connected Thursday (January 15, 2026), NASA footage showed, aft the archetypal ever aesculapian evacuation successful the orbital lab's history.
A video provender from NASA showed the capsule carrying American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui onshore disconnected the seashore of San Diego astatine 12.41 a.m. (0841 GMT).
A wellness contented prompted their ngo to beryllium chopped short, aft spending 5 months successful space.
The U.S. abstraction bureau has declined to disclose immoderate details astir the wellness contented but stressed the instrumentality was not an exigency situation.
The affected crewmember "was and continues to beryllium successful unchangeable condition," NASA authoritative Rob Navias said Wednesday (January 14, 2026).
Fincke, the SpaceX Crew-11 pilot, said successful a societal media station earlier this week: "First and foremost, we are each OK. Everyone connected committee is stable, safe, and good cared for."
"This was a deliberate determination to let the close aesculapian evaluations to hap connected the ground, wherever the afloat scope of diagnostic capableness exists. It's the close call, adjacent if it's a spot bittersweet."
The Crew-11 quartet arrived astatine the ISS successful aboriginal August and had been scheduled to enactment onboard the abstraction presumption until they were rotated retired successful mid-February with the accomplishment of the adjacent crew.
James Polk, NASA's main wellness and aesculapian officer, said "lingering risk" and a "lingering question arsenic to what that diagnosis is" led to the determination to bring backmost the unit earlier than primitively scheduled.
American astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived astatine the presumption successful November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, remained connected the ISS.
The Russian Roscosmos abstraction bureau operates alongside NASA connected the outpost, and the 2 agencies instrumentality turns transporting a national of the different state to and from the orbiter — 1 of the fewer areas of bilateral practice that inactive endure betwixt the United States and Russia.
Ready for the unexpected
Continuously inhabited since 2000, the International Space Station seeks to showcase multinational cooperation, bringing unneurotic Europe, Japan, the United States and Russia.
Located immoderate 400 kilometers (248.5 miles) supra Earth, the ISS functions arsenic a testbed for probe that supports deeper abstraction exploration — including eventual missions to instrumentality humans to the Moon and onward to Mars.
The 4 astronauts who were evacuated had been trained to grip unexpected aesculapian situations, said Amit Kshatriya, a elder NASA official, praising however they person dealt with the situation.
The ISS is acceptable to beryllium decommissioned aft 2030, with its orbit gradually lowered until it breaks up successful the ambiance implicit a distant portion of the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, a spacecraft graveyard.
