Nasa confirms: first flight to the Iss on Wednesday after medical evacuation

Four astronauts will take off next week to reorganise the staff of the International Space Station (Iss), according to a statement from Nasa, following the emergency medical evacuation of the previous crew. The Crew-12 will take off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 11 February, according to the US space agency, to return the International Space Station crew to seven members as soon as possible.

Earlier in the week, SpaceX had temporarily suspended Falcon 9 rocket flights to investigate what the Federal Aviation Administration called a "stage 2 engine failure. The Falcon 9 vehicle is cleared to return to flight," a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman told Afp on Friday. The temporary pause by SpaceX raised concerns that the Crew-12 flight could be delayed. The mission will replace Crew-11, which returned to Earth a month earlier than planned, in the first medical evacuation in the space station's history. The science laboratory, which orbits 400 kilometres above Earth, has since been staffed by a reduced crew of three. Nana did not disclose details about the health problem that caused the mission abort.

The Crew-12 mission will take off "not before 6.01 a.m." local time, 12.01 a.m. in Italia. The crew composition changed in November, when Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was suddenly replaced by Andrey Fedyaev. Some independent Russian media speculated that Artemyev was photographing and sending classified information with his phone. The Russian space agency Roscosmos merely stated that he had been transferred to another assignment. Besides Fedyaev, the Crew-12 crew consists of Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway and French astronaut Sophie Adenot.