HMM: Crew-8 astronauts remain mum about post-splashdown medical issue.

NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, returned to Earth Oct. 25 on a Crew Dragon spacecraft, concluding the 235-day Crew-8 mission. But later that day NASA said that the four were taken to a Pensacola, Florida, hospital for additional medical evaluations “out of an abundance of caution.” One of the NASA astronauts was hospitalized in stable condition there, but released the next day “in good health.”

NASA did not disclose the identity of the astronaut who was hospitalized or the specific medical concern that prompted the hospital visit. At a Nov. 8 press conference to discuss their mission, the three NASA astronauts declined to discuss details about the incident, citing medical privacy.

“Spaceflight is still something we don’t fully understand. We’re finding things we don’t expect sometimes, and this was one of those times,” Barratt, a doctor, said of what he called the “medical event” after splashdown. “We’re still piecing things together on this and so, to maintain medical privacy and to let our processes go forward in an orderly manner, this is all we’re going to say about that event at this time.”

It’s probably not a space parasite, symbiote, or a rapidly mutating microbe with a crystalline structure.