A NASA astronaut has opened up about the mystery medical issue he suffered onboard the ISS that triggered an unprecedented evacuation.
Four crewmates were blasted off the space station in January after commander Mike Fincke, 59, was hit by a health problem that struck like “a very, very fast lightning bolt”.
Four-time space flier Mike has revealed the distressing events that led to the historic evacuation.
But shockingly doctors still don’t know what was wrong with him despite doing several tests.
The astronaut said it all started on January 7 when he was eating dinner, shortly after making preparations for a spacewalk the next day.
He said that he couldn’t talk but remembers no pain and wasn’t choking.
His anxious crewmates noticed something wasn’t right and immediately jumped to his aid, requesting help from flight surgeons on the ground.
“It was completely out of the blue. It was just amazingly quick,” he told AP.
“My crewmates definitely saw that I was in distress.
“It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds.”
The alarming incident lasted 20 minutes and he felt fine afterward.
But the decision was made to blast Mike and the rest of SpaceX Crew-11 – Zena Cardman, Kimiya Yui, and Oleg Platonov – back to Earth as a precaution.
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Doctors have ruled out a possible heart attack and continue to investigate.
It could be related to his 549 days of weightlessness up.
Nasa has been looking through other astronauts’ medical records to see if there are any related cases previously reported in space.
But Mike can’t provide any more detail about what happened to him.
Nasa has been tight-lipped about the incident to maintain medical privacy of astronauts.
Mike said that space agency wants to ensure other astronauts do not feel that their medical privacy is at risk should sometime ever happen to them in future.
“I’ve been very lucky to be super healthy,” he added.
“So this was very surprising for everyone.”
