NASA astronaut says he can’t speak in space. Why remains a mystery
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The astronaut who prompted NASA’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said Friday that doctors still don’t know why he suddenly fell ill aboard the International Space Station.
Four-time astronaut Mike Fincke said he was eating dinner on January 7 after preparing for a spacewalk the next day when the incident occurred. He could not talk and did not even remember the pain, but his worried companions, seeing him in trouble, sprang into action and requested help from flight surgeons on the ground.
“It was completely unexpected. It was amazingly quick,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press from Houston’s Johnson Space Center.
Finke, 59, a retired Air Force colonel, said the episode lasted about 20 minutes and he felt fine after that. He said he still does that. He had never experienced anything like this before or since.
Doctors have ruled out a heart attack and Finke said he is not suffocating, but everything else is still confirmed and it may be related to his 549 days of weightlessness. He was five and a half months into his latest space station stay when the problem struck like a “very, very fast lightning bolt.”
“My crew mates definitely saw that I was in distress,” he said. “It was all hands on deck within a matter of seconds.”
Space station astronauts use ultrasound
Finke said he could not provide further details about his medical case. The space agency wants to make sure other astronauts don’t feel that their medical privacy will be compromised if something happens to them, he said.
Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk was one of the first people to notice that zero gravity had an effect on eye health.
The space station’s ultrasound machine came into play when the incident occurred, he said, and he has gone through several tests since returning to Earth. He said NASA is examining the medical records of other astronauts to see if any related incidents occurred in space.
Finke identified himself as ill late last month to end public speculation.
He still feels bad that the spacewalk was canceled due to his illness – it would have been his 10th, but the first for crewmate Jenna Cardman – and that it resulted in him and his two other crew members having to return early. SpaceX brought him back more than a month ago, on January 15, and he went straight to the hospital.
“I’m very fortunate that I’m extremely healthy. So it was very surprising to everyone,” she said.
Fincke stopped apologizing to everyone after orders from NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman.
“It wasn’t you. It was this place, wasn’t it?” His colleagues assured him. “You didn’t let anyone down.”
Always an optimist, he hopes he can return to space one day.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Associated Press is solely responsible for all content.
