Astronauts splash down after cutting space station mission short due to a medical issue

Four astronauts safely returned to Earth early Thursday, capping a dramatic and unusual week in space that required the crew members to leave the International Space Station about a month earlier than planned because of a medical issue that arose in orbit.

NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego, at 3:41 a.m. ET after a nearly 11-hour journey.

“On behalf of SpaceX and NASA, welcome home, Crew-11,” mission controllers radioed to the astronauts moments after their Dragon capsule hit the water.

Their return was the first time in the space station’s 25-year history that a mission was cut short because of a medical issue.

Because of medical privacy concerns, NASA has not disclosed the identity of the affected crew member or given any details about the medical incident. It said, however, that the situation was stable and not considered an emergency.

At a news briefing last week, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the decision to bring the crew members home early was made out of an abundance of caution.

The medical issue forced NASA to call off a planned spacewalk on Jan. 8, which was to have Cardman and Fincke perform upgrades to the exterior of the ISS.

Before he left the orbiting outpost, Fincke said he and his colleagues were “stable, safe and well cared for.”

“This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists,” Fincke wrote in a statement on LinkedIn. “It’s the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet.”

The astronauts returned to Earth in the same SpaceX Dragon capsule that they flew to the space station in.

The journey home was a smooth one, with mission controllers reporting “pristine weather conditions” at the splashdown site off the coast of California. The capsule’s drogue and main parachutes successfully deployed minutes before landing, slowing the spacecraft before it hit the water.

SpaceX personnel quickly arrived at the scene to examine the capsule before it was hoisted onto the deck of the recovery vessel. Dolphins could be seen playfully swimming around as it bobbed in the ocean.

The astronauts, known as Crew-11, spent 165 days aboard the space station. It was the first spaceflight for Cardman and Platonov, while Yui finished his second trip into orbit. Fincke, meanwhile, now has four spaceflights under his belt.

The astronauts arrived at the ISS in August and were scheduled to stay until late February. With Crew-11’s early departure, only three people are aboard the space station: NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.

The next rotation of space station crew members was scheduled to lift off no earlier than Feb. 15, but NASA said it is looking into options to bump up that flight. Still, Williams is likely to be the only NASA astronaut overseeing U.S. science experiments and operations on the station for at least a few weeks.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com