NASA’s Crew 11 astronauts were about to enter the final month of their mission aboard the International Space Station when a member of their team suddenly fell ill. The January incident prompted NASA’s first-ever medical evacuation from the ISS, and while the agency initially kept the details quiet, the affected crew member is now sharing his story.
Crew 11 pilot Mike Fincke identified himself as the ailing astronaut in February but did not provide specifics about what happened to him. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, he revealed that he suddenly lost the ability to speak while eating dinner on January 7.
“It was completely out of the blue,” Fincke told the AP. “It was just amazingly quick.”
He had spent the day preparing to conduct a spacewalk—a procedure he had executed nine times on previous ISS missions. Fincke said he did not remember feeling any pain, but his crewmates leapt into action when they saw his distress.
A first-of-its-kind emergency
Fincke said he was unable to speak for about 20 minutes. Faced with an unusual emergency, other members of Crew-11—commander Zena Cardman, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov—quickly sought guidance from flight surgeons on the ground.
“It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds,” he told the AP.
The ISS has a well-stocked pharmacy and a suite of medical equipment to periodically assess crew health, perform self-diagnoses, and treat certain illnesses and injuries. Fincke said the space station’s ultrasound machine came in handy during the incident, but he did not provide further details about the emergency care he received in orbit.
Ultimately, NASA postponed the space walk and decided Fincke needed to return to Earth to receive the care he needed. It was the agency’s first medical evacuation order in 25 years of ISS operations.
The Crew 11 astronauts splashed down off the coast of California on January 15—35 days before the scheduled end of their mission. The team’s departure left only three astronauts aboard the ISS, which is the minimum required to keep the space station running.
Fincke said he’s gone through numerous tests since returning to Earth, and the AP reports that NASA is combing through other astronauts’ medical records to look for similar incidents. Fincke said he felt fine after the event and never experienced anything like it before or since.
“The doctors are still scratching their heads,” he told NBC. “The good news is that we got a lot of good data to show that it wasn’t anything bad. I didn’t have a stroke. I didn’t have a heart attack.”
“We’re almost 100% sure that this is a space-related thing,” he added.
The hazards of human spaceflight
Spending months on the ISS is not easy on the body. Astronauts must endure long-term exposure to microgravity, space radiation, and isolation during their missions. Keeping them healthy is a feat of science and engineering.
Microgravity is a common driver of many spaceflight-related health conditions, including muscle atrophy, loss of bone density, and fluid shifts. While there is no evidence directly linking microgravity to sudden loss of speech (also known as aphasia), the AP reports that Fincke’s condition may have been related to the 549 days he’s spent in weightlessness over the course of his astronaut career.
It will require further research to figure out exactly what happened to Fincke and whether it could happen to other astronauts. For now, he told NBC he’s now “doing great” and is grateful to his crewmates and the whole NASA team. Crew 11 Commander Cardman, who spoke to NBC alongside Fincke, said the incident was a learning opportunity.
“We did as well as we possibly could have,” Cardman said. “I think this is actually a really great exercise, and we’ll be able to apply these lessons as we go farther afield.”
