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US astronaut says illness that cut short space mission made him unable to talk

The astronaut who prompted Nasa’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said on Friday that doctors still do not know why he suddenly fell sick…

By Samantha Johnson / March 27, 2026

The astronaut who prompted Nasa’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said on Friday that doctors still do not know why he suddenly fell sick at the International Space Station.

Four-time space flier Mike Fincke said he was eating dinner on January 7 after prepping for a spacewalk the next day when it happened. He could not talk and remembers no pain, but his anxious crewmates jumped into action after seeing him in distress and requested help from flight surgeons on the ground.

“It was completely out of the blue. It was just amazingly quick,” he said in an interview from Houston’s Johnson Space Centre.

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Fincke, 59, a retired Air Force colonel, said the episode lasted roughly 20 minutes and he felt fine afterward. He said he still does. He never experienced anything like that before or since.

Doctors have ruled out a heart attack and Fincke said he was not choking, but everything else is still on the table and could be related to his 549 days of weightlessness. He was 5½ months into his latest space station stay when the problem struck like “a very, very fast lightning bolt”.

Recovery vessels approach Nasa’s SpaceX Crew-11 capsule after a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, California, in January. Photo: Nasa via AP
Recovery vessels approach Nasa’s SpaceX Crew-11 capsule after a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, California, in January. Photo: Nasa via AP

“My crewmates definitely saw that I was in distress,” he said, with all six gathering around him. “It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds.”

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