HN Reader

It's great we can bring them down. What a terrifying experience to have a medical issue on the space station. Kidney stone? Ruptured appendix? intestinal blockage? How could you keep calm so far away!

Did NASA say when they're coming back? The article didn't mention it.

Should also mention NASA is trying to move up the launch of Crew 12 to cover some of the gap.

Article about how the return capsule works: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52840482

The ISS is a good example of a fully isolated environment. No new bacteria or viruses arrive there apart from spacecraft arrivals.

I've been curious for a while what human health would look like if there was a small group of people isolated for many decades. Would they effectively be disease free after the first few weeks?

As well as removing flu and colds, might it also reduce things like heart disease and Alzheimer's which we have weak evidence are linked to transmissible diseases?

Related question. Have transmittable diseases spread in space? What examples do we know of?

AFAIK no one have died in space from medical issues yet. Only accidents.

Why be so secretive? This is not a military mission. These missions cost a lot of taxpayer money (money well spend you may argue), but we deserve full transparency. You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy. We might want to learn from what went wrong here.