Fresh Crew of Astronauts Embark on Mission to ISS Following Recent Medical Evacuation

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A fresh team of astronauts embarked on a journey to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, setting the stage to replace the group that recently returned to Earth following NASA’s first-ever medical evacuation.

At NASA’s behest, SpaceX swiftly launched the new crew consisting of American, French, and Russian astronauts. Their mission, expected to last eight to nine months, will extend into the fall. The team is anticipated to reach the ISS by Saturday, thereby restoring the station’s full complement after the previous crew’s premature departure.

“Friday the 13th turned out to be quite fortuitous,” SpaceX Launch Control announced after the astronauts successfully entered orbit. “That was quite a ride,” responded mission commander Jessica Meir.

Due to the unexpected crew shortage, NASA had to temporarily suspend spacewalks and other tasks while awaiting the arrival of Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot, and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. These astronauts will join the three remaining on the ISS—an American and two Russians—who have been maintaining operations over the past month.

Confident in the existing medical protocols, NASA opted not to perform additional health checks on the new crew prior to liftoff and did not send any new diagnostic tools. An ultrasound machine, already in use for research aboard the ISS, was heavily utilized on January 7 to assist the ill astronaut. The identity and specific health issue of the affected crew member remain undisclosed. After their return, all four astronauts were immediately taken to the hospital following their Pacific splashdown near San Diego.

It was the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight that NASA cut short a mission for medical reasons.

With missions becoming longer, NASA is constantly looking at upgrades to the space station’s medical gear, said deputy program manager Dina Contella. “But there are a lot of things that are just not practical and so that’s when you need to bring astronauts home from space,” she said earlier this week.

In preparation for moon and Mars trips where health care will be even more challenging, the new arrivals will test a filter designed to turn drinking water into emergency IV fluid, try out an ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of experts on the ground, and perform ultrasound scans on their jugular veins in a blood clot study.

They also will demonstrate their moon-landing skills in a simulated test.

Adenot is only the second French woman to launch to space. She was 14 when Claudie Haignere flew to Russia’s space station Mir in 1996, inspiring her to become an astronaut. Haignere cheered her on from the Florida launch site, wishing her “Bon vol,” French for “Have a good flight,” and “Ad astra,” Latin for “To the stars.”

“I thought it would have been a quiet joy with pride for Sophie, but it was so hugely emotional to see her with a successful launch,” Haignere said.

Hathaway, like Adenot, is new to space, while Meir and Fedyaev are making their second station trip. Just before liftoff, Fedyaev led the crew in a cry of “Poyekhali” – Russian for “Let’s Go” – the word uttered at liftoff by the world’s first person in space, the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin, in 1961.

On her first mission in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of that spacewalk, Christina Koch, is among the four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio linkup is planned between the two crews.

Meir wasn’t sure astronauts would return to the moon during her career. “Now we’re right here on the precipice of the Artemis II mission,” she said ahead of liftoff. “The fact that they will be in space at the same time as us … it’s so cool to be an astronaut now, it’s so exciting.”

SpaceX launched the latest crew from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk’s company is preparing its neighboring Kennedy Space Center launch pad for the super-sized Starships, which NASA needs to land astronauts on the moon.