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After a medical issue prompted their evacuation, NASA’s Crew-11 astronauts safely splashed down off the coast of California in the predawn hours of Thursday morning. Their departure brought an early end to their mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), leaving the orbital laboratory temporarily understaffed.
On Monday, Crew-11 pilot Mike Fincke handed command of the space station over to Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. Fincke and his three crewmates then departed the ISS on Wednesday, leaving Kud-Sverchkov, his fellow cosmonaut Sergei Mikaev, and NASA’s Chris Williams as the station’s only remaining crew members.
Three is the minimum number of astronauts required to keep the ISS running. While it’s not inherently dangerous to run the ISS with a skeleton crew, it will certainly have an impact on day-to-day operations.
Reduced crew, reduced operations
The ISS has been continuously occupied for the past 25 years. For the first nine years of operations, the nominal crew size was only three. It has since increased to seven to maximize scientific research and operational efficiency—larger crews mean more hands to perform maintenance and laboratory tasks.
The ISS program is designed to maintain that level of continuous human presence, but missions don’t always go as planned, like in the case of Crew-11’s medical evacuation. The space station will now operate with a crew of three until the next team of astronauts, Crew-12, arrives in February.
In the meantime, Kud-Sverchkov, Mikaev, and Williams will have to shift their focus toward essential maintenance and space station operations, with less time available for research. They will also refrain from conducting any spacewalks that are not absolutely necessary for safety, as it is nominal to have two crew members perform the EVA while another two provide support from inside the ISS.
Williams will also be managing the NASA segment of the ISS on his own while Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev oversee the Roscosmos side.
“Chris is trained to do every task that we would ask him to do on the vehicle,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said during a press conference on January 8. Kshatriya added that ground control teams and Williams’s Russian crewmates will also be available to assist him.
As long as Crew-12 launches on time, Williams, Kud-Sverchkov, and Mikaev will only be alone on the ISS for about a month. The three of them are expected to remain aboard the space station until the summer, completing an eight-month mission.
What’s next for Crew-11?
Now that the Crew-11 astronauts have returned, all four of them are likely undergoing routine medical evaluations so that they can begin the reconditioning process. Spending an extended period of time in low gravity results in muscular atrophy, bone density loss, and fluid shifts, which means ISS astronauts have to go through weeks of rehabilitation back on Earth.
The ailing astronaut whose condition prompted Crew-11’s evacuation will now receive diagnostic attention that wasn’t possible on the ISS. NASA has not disclosed which astronaut is affected, nor any specifics about their condition, but has repeatedly said they are stable.
This was the first time in the 25-year history of the ISS that NASA has had to perform a medical evacuation. The agency’s ability to bring Crew-11 home safely and expediently just goes to show that it is always prepared for the unexpected, as are the ISS astronauts. NASA officials have expressed utmost confidence in Williams, Kud-Sverchkov, and Mikaev’s ability to maintain the space station while they await Crew-12’s arrival.
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Ellyn Lapointe
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