The secret team keeping astronauts alive 250 miles above Earth
Each crew NASA sends into space is assigned a flight surgeon
Featured Image Credit: NASA/© Getty Images
If you're anything like us, you might have wondered how astronauts get medical attention while floating about in space.
Space agencies like NASA regularly send people up into orbit to work in missions above our atmosphere but what happens when something goes wrong?
There is no existential hospital floating around, so it can be dicey when a medical emergency arises.
As it turns out, there is a secret team whose job is to keep astronauts alive 250 miles above Earth.
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A little-known fact about the crews which NASA sends into space is that each one is assigned a flight surgeon, which is a physician with specialised aerospace medicine training.
The role comes with some serious responsibility including monitoring the crew’s physical and psychological health all the way from pre-flight through to post-flight, creating personalized exercise, nutrition, and preventive care plans and advising the team from the ground during missions.
This news comes after NASA conducted the world’s first medical evacuation earlier this month.
Crew 11, who landed back on Earth in the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, were expected to complete a standard six and a half month stay after arriving at the International Space Station back in August 2025.
However, astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, disembarked a month early and carried out the 11-hour journey home in the early hours of January 15.
This was due to one of the astronauts, who NASA has not disclosed the identity of, becoming unwell.
This is a first for NASA, who has not medically evacuated a team in its 67 years of operation.
The astronaut in question is said to be ‘stable, safe and well cared for’, according to Fincke.
He continued: “This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists.”
Cardman added: “Our timing of this departure is unexpected, but what was not surprising to me was how well this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other.”
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, NASA wrote: “Welcome home, Crew-11! At 3:41am ET (0841 UTC), the @SpaceX Dragon spacecraft splashed down off the coast of San Diego, California.”
On the NASA website, a statement read: “This completes a stay in space of 167 days for the four-person crew. The mission returned to Earth earlier than originally planned as teams monitored a medical concern with a crew member living and working aboard the orbital laboratory. The crew member is stable.”