Posted: Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 5:18 PM ET (2218 GMT)

For the first time in the agency’s history, NASA is ending a crewed mission early because of a medical issue. NASA announced Thursday that the four members of Crew-11 will return to Earth in the “coming days” on their Crew Dragon spacecraft after one of them suffered an unspecified medical issue Wednesday. NASA did not disclose who suffered the issue or other details, but said the person was stable and that the issue was not serious enough to require an immediate emergency evacuation from the station. They added that the medical issue was not related to preparations for a spacewalk that was scheduled for Thursday but called off by the incident. NASA is looking to potentially moving up the Crew-12 mission, currently planned to launch as soon as mid-February. However, the agency expects that for at least a few weeks the ISS will be operated by a three-person crew, including one NASA astronaut, who arrived at the station in November on a Soyuz.