<\/p>\n Crew-11’s Crew Dragon capsule will leave the International Space Station<\/a> (ISS) on Wednesday at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California at around 3:40 a.m. EST (0840 GMT) on Thursday (Jan. 15). This schedule is contingent, however, on good weather in the splashdown zone.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Crew-11 consists of NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Japanese spaceflyer Kimiya Yui and Oleg Platonov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.<\/a> The quartet arrived at the ISS on Aug. 2 for a roughly six-month stay, but they’ll end up falling a bit short of that goal.<\/p>\n On Wednesday (Jan. 7), NASA announced that it was postponing a Thursday (Jan. 8) spacewalk slated to be performed by Fincke and Cardman because an ISS astronaut had experienced a “medical concern<\/a>.”<\/p>\n On Thursday, the agency said it would bring the Crew-11 astronauts home early<\/a>, to better diagnose and treat that medical issue. NASA has not told us which astronaut is affected or what exactly the issue is, citing privacy concerns.<\/p>\n Dr. James Polk, NASA’s chief health and medical officer, did give a vague description during a press conference on Thursday, however.<\/p>\n “This is not an operational issue. This was not an injury that occurred in the pursuit of operations,” Polk said. “It’s mostly having a medical issue in the difficult areas of microgravity<\/a>, and with the suite of hardware that we have at our avail to complete a diagnosis.”<\/p>\n On Thursday, NASA officials said that they’d work out a Crew-11 departure date soon, and that information did indeed come in short order \u2014 on Friday night.<\/p>\n \n The crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission pose for a photo during a training session before their launch to the International Space Station. From left: Oleg Platonov, Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman, and Kimiya Yui. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n The Crew-11 astronauts were supposed to stay aboard the ISS until the arrival of their replacements, the four spaceflyers of SpaceX’s Crew-12<\/a> mission. Crew-12’s liftoff is currently targeted for mid-February, though NASA is looking into moving that up a bit if possible.<\/p>\n After Crew-11 leaves, just three astronauts will remain aboard the orbiting lab: NASA’s Christopher Williams and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, all of whom flew to the ISS on Nov. 27<\/a> aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.<\/p>\n![\"three](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/JkZn36tq8gbrcZgF77gcrb.jpg\")
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