Three Nasa astronauts who were taken to a Florida hospital after returning to Earth from the International Space Station two weeks ago, told reporters on Friday that they were all in good health following the medical ordeal – and that the agency was “still piecing things together” about what happened.
Michael Barrett, pilot of the crew that crashed in the Gulf of Mexico on Oct. 25 after seven months in orbit, gave few further details at a news conference in Houston, citing medical privacy laws that he said prevented him from discuss the episode in detail.
“Space flight is still something we do not fully understand. We sometimes get things we don’t expect – this was one of those times,” he said.
“We are still putting things together. I’m a medical doctor, space medicine is my passion, and how we adapt, how we experience human spaceflight, is something we all take very seriously. In the fullness of time we will allow it to come out.”
Barrett is with Nasa headquarters by crew members Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps. A fourth member, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, was not present.
All four were flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, in what Nasa said was “an abundance of caution,” shortly after landing in a SpaceX capsule after 235 days in space.
One of the crew members, who has not been identified, was “detained briefly” at the hospital but was released “in good health” to continue what it called post-flight repairs, the US space agency said at the time. said.
On Friday, in their first public appearance since the end of the mission, the three Americans spoke about their first days back on Earth.
“The big things you expect, being disoriented, being dizzy. But the little things, like just sitting in a hard chair, the back of my head hasn’t really sat in a hard thing for 235 days… it’s kind of uncomfortable, right? I didn’t expect that, right?” Dominick, the mission’s commander, said.
“I remember like the third or fourth day after we got back, we were sitting out on our patio, having dinner with my family, and I just wanted to be part of the family and be there with the activities, but I couldn’t no more sitting on that hard chair. I just laid a towel on the ground.”
The mission was expected to end in August, but the astronauts were told to stay on the International Space Station (ISS) for two extra months, partly because of technical problems surrounding the ill-fated maiden flight of Boeing. upset Starliner capsule.
Starliner’s astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, are still aboard the ISS, five months into what was planned to be a week-long mission. They will not come home until February.
The return of Barrett and his crew, meanwhile, has been delayed by about another two weeks due to weather, including Hurricane Milton’s rush across the Gulf of Mexico in early October.
“You’re like, are we going home tomorrow? You call your wife, like, hey, we’re coming home tomorrow, and then we’re not, and then we’re coming home, no, next week. Maybe,” Dominick said.
“That part was entertaining to do, but it was definitely great to spend bonus time in space.”
