Astronaut who was evacuated from ISS describes ordeal, looks ahead to Artemis II mission

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Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz.

I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast,

a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC.

And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out

how artificial intelligence is changing

the business world and our lives.

So each week on Big Technology,

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NASA is planning to launch its first mission sending astronauts

to the Moon since 1972.

That's going to happen on Wednesday.

It's four person crews currently quarantining

and Houston in preparation for takeoff.

Our next guest knows a little something

about space flight preparations.

He was forced to return home

from the International Space Station earlier this year

due to health concern.

This marked NASA's first ever medical evacuation

in the orbital lab's history.

So joining us now this morning is NASA astronaut

retired Air Force Colonel and former ISS crew member,

Mike Fink.

Thank you so much for joining us, sir.

Good morning, great to see everybody.

So before we get to your story personally, specifically,

tell us a little bit about what the crew of Artemis II

is going through during this quarantine phase

ahead of their schedule launch.

This is a great crew.

They've trained, trained to go fly on a test flight

of the Orion spacecraft.

They're going to be launching on a really huge rocket

called the SLS, and they're going to go farther

and faster than we've ever gone before.

And so they're excited.

When we astronauts get ready for something like this,

it's, there's definitely deep emotions

because we're humans, but we're also professional,

com, cool, and collected.

And what a great crew that we have.

They're going to make sure that the Orion spacecraft

is ready to go for future flights.

They're going to get to see the far side of the moon.

And right now they're just thinking of all the things

that they need to do and the right orders

to make sure that they do it correctly.

That's definitely our mantra of not messing things up.

Very important to treat to be able to speak with you

because you've been in this quarantine.

You know what this is like for your mission.

I mean, it was a first in that.

It was the first of its kind of event

for an evacuation due to a medical condition.

Tell us about that process, what happened?

And the lessons you're hoping it can provide for the future.

Well, we're definitely learning a lot of really good

and important lessons.

Abored the International Space Station on January 7th.

We're getting ready for a spacewalk for January 8th.

And then something happened.

And my crewmates all helped me get through what it was.

And I'm not being vague as we're still trying

to figure out exactly what it might have been.

We can say a lot of things.

For example, I did not have a heart attack.

In fact, before we fly, they make sure

we're extremely healthy individuals

so that we don't have a chance

for any of these kind of things are very small.

So very surprising to all of us that anything happened.

But since we didn't know what it was

and we couldn't determine aboard the space station,

we knew that I was okay enough

that we could wait a few days to come up with a great plan.

It was a really nice plan that we,

that competently, Yosina Cardman is Commander of the Dragon.

She lit our team to get us to ready for landing.

SpaceX team was ready to receive us.

We picked a great place to land.

Splash down right off the coast of San Diego.

We landed at two in the morning,

three in the morning, something like that local time.

Dolphins came to visit our spacecraft after it splashed down.

Just a few hours.

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Later, I was getting some really great scams

at the Scripps-Lohoye Medical Facility

right there off the coast of San Diego,

some of the world's finest machines for finest doctors.

We're taking a look to see what happened.

We still don't know.

So yeah, so I know that you don't know exactly what it was,

but can you perhaps share what kind of symptoms you had?

I mean, how did you know you were sick?

I didn't know I was sick,

but my crewmates saw that something was off with me.

I wasn't feeling anything bad.

So they went through what our training was

of how to handle a crew member that wasn't feeling well.

And the really neat thing is that we were able to get

the flight surgeons, the doctors here in Houston

on the loops with video and audio,

and they walked the team through it

and to get me stabilized and in good condition.

This proves that helps us really get some good data

for how do we do this as we go beyond low worth orbit

and to the moon and Mars,

and how do we handle medical things?

Exactly, because things do happen,

even if you are cleared and colonel,

I mean, it must have been frightening

when all of this was happening.

Tell us a bit about your mental state,

especially having to come back

and the entire crew having to come back.

That must have, you must have had mixed emotions there,

not wanting to leave space,

not wanting to, your colleagues to leave space.

So, yeah, we called it bittersweet.

We had had five and a half months already aboard the space station.

We were ready for, we just came home a few weeks early,

so it wasn't drastic.

But still, we weren't quite ready.

We still had another month in us.

And we wanted to see our crew 12 friends come on board.

And, but that wasn't meant to be.

And we didn't fight it.

I mean, it wasn't our choice to make.

This was the highest levels at NASA.

And at this point, they said, no, you're going to come home

and we're going to work on it to be the least risk posture

that we can make sure that either I was safe.

So, I'll just let you know that that's one of the mantras

we have as astronauts is we don't want to let our friends down.

And I felt for a long time that I let my friends down.

I had to get ordered by my counseled by my crewmates

ordered by the chief of the office

and the administrator himself said,

I'm not allowed to say, I'm sorry anymore.

Yes.

Because it wasn't my fault.

But I still, it's definitely disappointing.

But what a good story.

I mean, we came back.

It was a great, we streaked through the atmosphere splash down.

The dolphins are there.

The dolphins are there.

The magical.

And all my crewmates are safe.

I'm doing great.

I'm even, even secretly hoping to get back on flight status

someday.

That was our next question.

I mean, are you going to get cleared?

Yeah.

The other thing, Colonel, I'm sure this is how you see it too.

Everything becomes the mission, right?

Now the mission is, how do we operate to ensure your safety?

What do we learn from this to make sure

that our future missions are even safer?

So, at all, it all plays a role.

Colonel Mike Fink, thank you so much for joining us

sharing your story.

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Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz.

I'm the host of Big Technology podcast,

a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC.

And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out

how artificial intelligence is changing the business world

and our lives.

So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors

from companies building AI tech and outsiders

trying to influence it.

Asking where this is all going,

they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon,

and plenty more.

So if you want to be smart with your wallet,

your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues

and at dinner parties,

listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts.