NASA has postponed a spacewalk outdoors the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) and is contemplating bringing again its crew early attributable to a medical challenge that arose on Wednesday (Jan. 7) with one of many astronauts on board, the company mentioned.
The spacewalk was deliberate for 8 a.m. ET on Thursday (Jan. 8) to complete getting ready an influence channel the place a brand new photo voltaic array is ready to be put in on the ISS. American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman had been scheduled to exit the area station for six.5 hours in what would have been Cardman’s first spacewalk. (Fincke has already carried out 9 spacewalks.)
“These are the conditions NASA and our companions prepare for and put together to execute safely,” a NASA spokesperson wrote in an electronic mail replace on Thursday.
However, the company is contemplating bringing Fincke, Cardman and two different astronauts, who’re half of the present four-person crew aboard the ISS, dwelling early from their keep on the orbital outpost. “Safely conducting our missions is our highest precedence, and we’re actively evaluating all choices, together with the opportunity of an earlier finish to Crew-11’s mission,” the spokesperson mentioned.
Crew-11 arrived on the ISS on Aug. 2, 2025. Fincke and Cardman had been joined by Japan Aerospace Exploration Company astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov for a six-month mission, after which the astronauts had been set to get replaced by Crew-12 as a part of the area station’s common staffing rotation.
Crew-12’s launch is scheduled for mid-February. It’s unclear what returning Crew-11 dwelling early would imply for the ISS, as such modifications to the same old rotation are extremely uncommon, however there are different astronauts residing on the area station in the mean time — together with NASA’s Christopher Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev, who arrived on the orbiting lab aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that destroyed its launching pad in November.
Additional updates from NASA are anticipated within the coming hours.
