Oh, Dear: NASA Astronaut Hospitalized After Return From Space Station

A NASA astronaut was flown to a hospital with an unspecified medical issue on Friday shortly after returning to Earth from a nearly eight-month mission on the International Space Station, the space agency said.

The astronaut, who NASA did not name for privacy reasons, had splashed down off Florida’s coast at 3:29 a.m. ET on Friday aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule with three other crew members — two NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut.

The crew included U.S. astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. Their 235 days in space made it longer than the usual six-month ISS mission duration and marked the longest stay in orbit for SpaceX’s reusable Crew Dragon spacecraft.

NASA initially said the entire crew was transported to the medical center for additional evaluation and out of an abundance of caution, but did not specify whether all or a portion of the crew had been experiencing issues.