An astronaut prompted NASA’s first medical evacuation earlier this year after he was suddenly unable to speak. The episode dates back to January 7th, but the scare he received remains a mystery to be solved, as doctors still don’t know why he suddenly fell ill on the International Space Station.
Mike Fincke, who has completed four space flights, said he was eating dinner after preparing for a spacewalk the next day when he could no longer speak. He doesn’t remember feeling any pain, but his worried crewmates acted quickly and called for help.
“It was completely unexpected. It happened incredibly quickly,” said the astronaut in an interview with the agency Associated Press (AP)at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Fincke, 59, a retired Air Force colonel, said the episode lasted about 20 minutes and left no aftereffects, but he had never experienced anything like it.
Doctors ruled out a heart attack and Fincke assures that he was not choking, but all other hypotheses are still being considered and may be related to the fact that he spent 549 days in a weightless situation. He was five and a half months into his last stay on the space station when the problem hit him like “a very, very fast bolt of lightning.”
“My crewmates certainly realized that I was in danger. In a matter of seconds, everyone mobilized,” he said.
Fincke says he cannot provide further details about the episode, as the space agency wants to ensure that other astronauts do not feel that their medical privacy will be compromised if something happens to them.
NASA is analyzing the medical records of other astronauts to see if any similar cases may have occurred in space.
Fincke, who took responsibility for the illness, putting an end to the speculation, still feels bad that the episode caused the cancellation of the spacewalk, which would have been his tenth, but the first for colleague Zena Cardman. The astronaut only stopped apologizing when NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, ordered him to stop.
SpaceX brought them back on January 15, more than a month ahead of schedule, and they went directly to the hospital.
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