CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Three NASA astronauts whose extended house station mission ended with a visit to the hospital final month declined to say Friday which one in every of them was sick.
Astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps publicly mentioned their spaceflight for the primary time since coming back from the Worldwide House Station on Oct. 25. They spent practically eight months in orbit, longer than anticipated due to all the difficulty with Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule and tough climate, together with Hurricane Milton.
Quickly after their SpaceX capsule splashed down within the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast, the three had been taken to a hospital in close by Pensacola together with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who launched with them again in March.
One of many Individuals ended up spending the night time there for an undisclosed “medical issue.” NASA declined to say who was hospitalized or why, citing medical privateness.
When requested at Friday’s information convention which one had been sick, the astronauts refused to remark. Barratt, a health care provider who focuses on house medication, declined to even describe the signs that the unidentified astronaut had.
“Spaceflight is still something we don’t fully understand. We’re finding things that we don’t expect sometimes. This was one of those times and we’re still piecing things together on this,” mentioned Barratt, the one member of the crew who had flown in house earlier than.
Epps mentioned everyone seems to be totally different in how they reply to house — and gravity.
“That’s the part that you can’t predict,” she mentioned, including, “Every day is better than the day before.”
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Dominick mentioned little issues like sitting comfortably in a tough chair took a number of days to get used to as soon as he returned. He mentioned he didn’t use the treadmill in any respect throughout his time in house, as a part of an experiment to see what gear could be pared on an extended journey to Mars. The primary time he walked was when he acquired out of the capsule.
The 2 astronauts who served as check pilots for Boeing’s Starliner — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — will stay on the house station till February, flying again with SpaceX. Starliner returned empty in September.
The Related Press Health and Science Division receives assist from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Academic Media Group. The AP is solely chargeable for all content material.
