SpaceX Crew-8 astronaut released from hospital, returns to Houston

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'The crew member is in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members.'

black and white thermal image of a space capsule descending through earth's atmosphere under parachutes
Thermal overhead view of SpaceX's Crew Dragon "Endeavour" splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. The capsule returned from the International Space Station with Crew-8 members Matt Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Alexander Grebenkin. (Image credit: NASA+)

The NASA astronaut who was hospitalized for a night after the splashdown of SpaceX's Crew-8 mission has been released and is doing well, according to the agency.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule "Endeavour" returned to Earth on Friday morning (Oct. 25) off the coast of Florida, bringing an end to the 235-day Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The landing went well, and everything appeared to be normal. However, shortly thereafter, NASA announced that all four Crew-8 astronauts — NASA's Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Alexander Grebenkin of Russia's space agency Roscosmos — were taken to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola, a hospital in Florida, for evaluation. This was done "out of an abundance of caution," agency officials said in a post-splashdown news conference.

Three of the four astronauts were released on Friday and flown to Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, where NASA's astronaut corps is based. However, one crewmember — a NASA astronaut — stayed overnight in the hospital "as a precautionary measure," the agency wrote in an update on Friday.

Related: Crew-8 astronauts splash down on SpaceX Dragon Endeavour after weather delays (video)

NASA gave us some good news in another update on Saturday (Oct. 26): The fourth astronaut was released from the hospital that day and returned to JSC.

"The crew member is in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members," stated the update, which agency officials said (in an emailed statement) would be the final one on this matter.

NASA has not identified the astronaut or the issue that led to the hospital stay, and it will not do so in the future.

"To protect the crew member's medical privacy, specific details on the individual’s condition and identity will not be shared," agency officials wrote in Saturday's blog post.

Support teams work around the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft shortly after it splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean near Florida with the four Crew-8 astronauts on Oct. 25, 2024. (Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)
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— SpaceX Crew-8 astronaut mission: Live updates

— Crew-8 astronauts splash down on SpaceX Dragon Endeavour after weather delays (video)

— Hurricane Milton forces NASA, SpaceX to delay Crew-8 astronauts' return to Earth

Long-duration spaceflight affects the body in multiple ways, from vision problems to decreases in bone density and muscle mass.

NASA and other space agencies know about these effects and work hard to mitigate them. For instance, astronauts aboard the ISS spend several hours every day exercising to keep their muscles and bones as strong as possible in the microgravity environment.

Crew-8 lasted longer than a typical ISS stint, which is about six months. But other astronauts have lived away from their home planet for more extended periods. For example, NASA's Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin spent 371 days aboard the orbiting lab recently after their Soyuz spacecraft sprang a leak in orbit and they had to wait for a new ride home.

Russia's Valeri Polyakov holds the all-time record for the longest continuous space stay — 437 days, set aboard the Soviet-Russian Mir space station in 1994-95.

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Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Unclear Engineer
    "agency officials said (in an emailed statement) would be the final one on this matter."

    At least until the conspiracy theories get so outlandish that NASA feels compelled to provide some reality by divulging some actual information. By which time they will have no credibility of the subject.

    As another poster observed in a previous thread, this secrecy does not seem necessary or rational.
    Reply
  • ChrisA
    My hope is that the astronaut in question simply tells us what went on.

    But if he fails to do that, we the people who paid for ISS built it for a few reasons, one of them was to find out what happens to humans when exposed to space for long periods of time. So it seems that now we have found an outlier point and it would be best if the data were published. A peer-reviewed paper would be the best way to publish it.

    Or we simply wait until the information leaks.

    In the meantime we can guess. My guess is that so, someone stood up and got lightheaded and fell down because his veins were too weak to cause blood to flow from his feet back to the brain. Then after a day or so exposed to gravity, he recovered. yes, this is a guess. This can not be the only guess and most guesses will be wrong. Better for someone to set the record right before the space gets filled with guesses.
    Reply
  • billslugg
    Our HIPPA law precludes public sharing of medical data by medical providers. However, it may have been the person signed that right away in order to go up there in the first place. Just some rank speculation.
    Reply
  • Unclear Engineer
    Actually, HIPPA only restrict medical personnel from divulging personal medical information about another individual. A non-medical observer could legally tell the news media everything he/she witnessed, even interpreting a visible electrocardiogram screen if it was visible to him/her.

    NASA probably has some additional restrictions on what its employees and contractors can tell the media, which is probably the real issue, here.

    But, I think that, as the taxpayers who pay for all of NASA, including the space station and the astronauts salaries, we are entitled to know what happened to an astronaut doing the work we paid for. Effectively, we are the real employers. So we need to know if our employees in NASA were negligent or if they discovered something that we need to know about as we decide how to proceed with putting humans into space.

    This is not a "national security" issue, so the actual need for secrecy is not evident.

    But, the way NASA is handling it provides real opportunity for malicious misinformation efforts intended to hurt our nation. That is a very real issue that does involve national security, as evidenced by the recent riots in various countries that were targeted with misinformation campaigns. For instance, see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2x3kr6lgo for an example of how this was done while the medical condition of the Princess of Wales was being withheld.
    Reply