Veteran NASA astronaut Mike Fincke retires
NASA astronaut Mike Fincke flew on four missions during his career spanning three decades, spending 549 days in space and completing nine space walks, totaling 48 hours and 37 minutes in the vacuum of space.
He’s been on several different vehicles, including SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, NASA’s Space Shuttle and Russia’s Soyuz capsule.
Fincke’s journey began when he joined NASA’s 16th astronaut class in 1996. He first launched into space in 2004 aboard Soyuz TMA‑4 for Expedition 9. In 2009, he flew on again Soyuz TMA‑13 for Expedition 18.
“Fortunately for me, Soyuz was developed in the 1960s by Soviet Union, and I have the same physio-type as a as a Soviet male from the 1960s; short and squat,” Fincke said. “I Studied Russian in college and spent early space station days helping get space station built in Russia, so I could speak Russian. So, they let me be copilot. It was a joy to fly Soyuz.”
On Fincke’s last mission on the ISS on NASA’s Crew-11, he encountered a medical issue that cut his stay short. Fincke’s health situation led to the first medical evacuation from the space station.
“For 25 years of continuous human habitation, we never had a medical event like this,” Fincke said. “Never had to come back home early. This was the first time, and we really learned a lot from that. It made us think, all right, how can we do better? Because our equipment, we haven't updated some of the things since the early 2010’s. It's now 2026. Medical technology is advanced.”
With his retirement, Fincke said his knowledge, and what he has learned, will stay with the agency even though he will no longer be part of future missions into space. Fincke said it’s important to both learn from the past, and work towards using new methods, techniques and technologies for the future of space exploration.
“You have to look towards the future and not get stuck in the past and just say, ‘hey, just because we did it in Apollo or Gemini or Mercury, in the shuttle, that's how we have to do it in the future.’ On the other hand, it's also not wise to throw away knowledge and experience, and that's a tricky bit that we have in our culture, and it's been that way for a long time.”
Now, he said he plans to teach at MIT and work with commercial space companies. Fincke hopes to inspire the next generation, and work with various space and military startups.
What happens if there’s a medical issue in space?
Fincke’s medical issue and evacuation from the ISS demonstrate the need for advanced medical equipment and training to keep astronauts safe. That’s why medical researchers are working to develop new technology to help when astronauts need medical attention.
To help when someone in space feels ill, NASA typically uses telemedicine to help. Those virtual doctors can guide astronauts using diagnostic tools like ultrasounds.
Dr. Manny Urquieta is the vice chair of Aerospace Medicine and associate professor of medicine at the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine. He said new medical technologies and procedures prepare every crew if a medical issue were to happen during their time in space.
When it came to Fincke’s evacuation from the ISS, Urquieta said the crew was as prepared as they could be.
“All astronauts before they go to space, they undergo a very stringent multi-year training process,” he said. “As they are astronaut candidates and they go through multiple simulations of what could go wrong, both from an environment perspective, but also from a medical perspective…luckily enough for the astronauts on the space station, no matter where they are around, they have access basically 24/7 to Houston Mission Control. So, anything that requires feedback from a specialist on Earth, they can just grab the phone and ask for recommendations and what not.”
But for deep space astronauts bound for the moon or Mars, they may not have that doctor to talk with. Urquieta said because of these limitations, diagnosing and addressing a medical issue on long-duration missions will have to use new methods other than what’s used on the ISS.
“The space station has a bunch of luxuries that that we're not going to have during the Artemis missions or eventually when we go to Mars,” he said. “One of them is, as I was mentioning, the fact that they have real-time communications 24/7 with Mission Control…The second one is the luxury that every month or so, there's a resupply vehicle that goes to the space station, so we can make sure that the pharmacy is outfitted, any medical supplies that are expired we can bring new ones, and that's not something we will have on a mission to the Moon or Mars.”
Before humans journey further into space, Urquieta said scientists will have to investigate the impacts of radiation on the human body. Most of the data from crewed spaceflight missions has been within Earth’s magnetosphere.
“What this means is that most of the astronauts are still protected from most of the space radiation by the Earth's magnetic fields,” Urquieta said. “Once you go beyond this magnetosphere, when you go to the moon or farther from the moon, then you are really exposed to full space radiation. We call this galactic cosmic radiation, and these are basically very small particles traveling at the speed of light, and they're incredibly difficult to shield from a physical perspective. I would put space radiation as one of the top things to explore, particularly for these types of missions.”
