Astronaut Mike Fincke finally reveals details of his medical emergency on ISS
Astronaut Mike Fincke, who had an undisclosed medical issue on ISS in January 2026 that forced the early return of his crew, has finally provided details of what happened.
Four-time space flier Mike Fincke said he was eating dinner on Jan. 7 after prepping for a spacewalk the next day when it happened. He couldn’t talk and remembers no pain, but his anxious crewmates jumped into action after seeing him in distress and requested help from flight surgeons on the ground. “It was completely out of the blue. It was just amazingly quick,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press from Houston’s Johnson Space Center.
Fincke, 59, a retired Air Force colonel, said the episode lasted roughly 20 minutes and he felt fine afterward. He said he still does. He never experienced anything like that before or since. Doctors have ruled out a heart attack and Fincke said he wasn’t choking, but everything else is still on the table and could be related to his 549 days of weightlessness. He was 5 ½ months into his latest space station stay when the problem struck like “a very, very fast lightning bolt.”
Fincke hopes he can fly in space again, but I doubt NASA would agree if the cause of this incident is not identified. His other option then would be to get hired by one of the commercial space station companies to fly to their stations, but even they might be reluctant to hire him.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Astronaut Mike Fincke, who had an undisclosed medical issue on ISS in January 2026 that forced the early return of his crew, has finally provided details of what happened.
Four-time space flier Mike Fincke said he was eating dinner on Jan. 7 after prepping for a spacewalk the next day when it happened. He couldn’t talk and remembers no pain, but his anxious crewmates jumped into action after seeing him in distress and requested help from flight surgeons on the ground. “It was completely out of the blue. It was just amazingly quick,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press from Houston’s Johnson Space Center.
Fincke, 59, a retired Air Force colonel, said the episode lasted roughly 20 minutes and he felt fine afterward. He said he still does. He never experienced anything like that before or since. Doctors have ruled out a heart attack and Fincke said he wasn’t choking, but everything else is still on the table and could be related to his 549 days of weightlessness. He was 5 ½ months into his latest space station stay when the problem struck like “a very, very fast lightning bolt.”
Fincke hopes he can fly in space again, but I doubt NASA would agree if the cause of this incident is not identified. His other option then would be to get hired by one of the commercial space station companies to fly to their stations, but even they might be reluctant to hire him.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I wonder if he’s on a statin.
Amazon “Lipitor, Thief of Memory” by (astronaut!) Duane Graveline.
Patrick Underwood,
I hope he isn’t on a statin – an entirely useless class of pharmaceutical that addresses what isn’t even a problem, namely serum cholesterol level. Statins do make you less mentally sharp over time which is why I never started them and got my wife off of them too after she started showing effects.
But Fincke’s symptomology sounds like some sort of brain issue. I had a sudden-onset issue of that sort of my own some years ago that happened in the middle of a phone call. I suddenly couldn’t speak. My speech returned fairly soon, but a lasting after-effect is that I can no longer reliably recall names sometimes. Even ones I’ve known for decades sometimes elude me for a time. My issue was due to a small spontaneous bleed from a blood vessel in my brain due to a long-time blood condition that suddenly got worse. Maybe that’s also Fincke’s problem and maybe not, but I suspect his issue is at least brain-centered.
I wish him well, in any case, and hope the source of his issue can be run down and dealt with and that it doesn’t preclude him from further in-space employment.
From all the symptoms I’ve read on X, it seems like it was a TIA. I’ve had people close to me suffer such an event, and the description sounds nearly the same. These are essentially a mini-stroke caused by a temporary blockage of an artery in the brain that leaves no lasting effects. They often never occur again. Given the amount of time it took before the doctors could examine him, detecting a TIA is nearly impossible.
TIA was my thought too.
I applaud Colonel Fincke’s courage in discussing the event. It certainly takes the heat off of his fellow crewmates, who got some unpleasant and ridiculous speculation heaped on them.
Suspect that he is probably grounded for future space missions, but I think about Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton and think, maybe not.
All the best to him.
Dick Eagleson… glad you’re okay.
I had an episode of “transient global amnesia” while on a statin (not to mention chronic and acute musculoskeletal problems) and finally took my wife and myself off the stuff. Haven’t had a recurrence in the several years since. My doctor didn’t even blink; guessing he had many other patients unwilling to use statins.
Graveline, a physician, had TGAs as well, and of course his astronaut career suffered as a consequence. His data linking statins to the condition is convincing but of course completely dismissed by the medical “community.”
Whether TGAs are connected to TIAs, I don’t know. Possibly… but they found nothing at all in my case.
Of note
https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/the-brain-consistently-moved-upward-and-backward-astronauts-brains-physically-shift-in-their-heads-during-spaceflight
Mike Thompson,
TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack) was my first thought when I had my problem, unlikely as that seemed given my medical history. Turned out it was the opposite, a bleed as opposed to a clot. Unlike TIA, readily detectable because of the hematoma. I had had ITP (Idiopathic Trombocytopenia Purpura), a chronically low platelet count, for decades but it never caused bleeding until my platelet count suddenly dropped by half from its already low level. Many attempts to medicate the issue failed and I’m still suffering aftereffects of some of that – steroids. What finally fixed the issue was removing my spleen. In about half of ITP patients, the spleen turns traitor and eats most of the platelets. “Idiopathic,” by the way, is med-speak for “of unknown origin.” Doctors can’t even say “we have no idea” except in a dead foreign language.
Patrick Underwood,
TGA sounds way scarier than what I went through and that was plenty scary enough. Glad you got past it.
The “medical community” is pretty much in unholy alliance with Big Pharma these days. There’s no real desire to cure anything anymore, just to palliate everything with expensive drugs one has to take for the rest of one’s life that also generate an endless series of largely insurance-paid lab tests and doctor visits to monitor and treat – mostly ineffectively – the side-effects. Much of “healthcare” is now an engineered parasite on the general society and the Hippocratic Oath is a grim joke.
I hope your doctor has gotten enough patient pushback on statins to where he doesn’t even put up a fight for his real paymasters anymore. My own doctor hemmed and hawed a bit, but went long with both the wife and I abandoning both statins and the godawful Metformin – another palliative for a non-malady, “elevated” A1C. Stuff gives you a permanent case of the drizzling poops. The “medical profession” these days is perfectly happy to ruin whatever quality of life you have left and prematurely usher you into a pine box so long as they have applied the so-called “standard of care.”
My hope is that one or more of the billionaire “tech bros,” as they age, will take an interest in developing actual cures for the ills flesh is heir to. Curing things outright would vastly reduce “healthcare” costs, put Medicare on a sustainable base and allow the US government deficit/debt situation to be addressed with a greater likelihood of success. Maybe something for Elon to tackle in his old age after his Conquering the Universe projects are off to good starts and our Kardashev score is on a steady rise.
Dick Eagleson: a woman of my acquaintance has persistent kidney issues. Her critique of the medical profession: ‘educated guessers’. She is not wrong. But, that can apply to any field. Difference is, when it’s your well-being, it’s a another perspective.
Dick Eagleson
An older associate of mine has a saying which, once I joined the Medicare set, I adopted:
“You may be your doctor’s patient; but you are not your doctor’s customer”
Within 6 months of being on Medicare it became my saying. Hoping your wish for tech bro interest comes true, *before* my countdown clock reaches T-0.
All the best to you.
Interesting that he compared it to a lightning bolt. I wonder if he has had experience with nearby lightning hits or transient EMF or high magnetic fields. I know more than one person who has and then later things like smells (say from food) and static discharge or lights can set them off as if petit mal but partial disability and imposible to find a physical cause. No drug treatment or any treatment needed. Research in Transcranial magnetic stimulation describes some rare side effects with loss of functions
Assuming NASA got every diagnostic available such as PET with stress test etc and did not find anything. NASA may want to subject him to space again just to see what happens. With Starship the really heavy diagnostic equipment used at places like MGH McLean Hospital is possible. If a lot of people are going to the Moon and Mars soon, then we need to know more about this stuff to design gravity, radiation shielding, g forces and all the trade offs.
Still safer than climbing K2.
But people are have more critical dependencies to each other in space
Thank you all for the kind words, additional stories and best wishes. Right back atcha. Like Blair’s female acquaintance, I have also had kidney issues for a long time. One of the newer palliatives seems to be helping a fair amount without any persistent side-effects but it’s still on-patent and so is still expensive even with Medicare. So it goes. May we all, in whatever fashion, avoid our appointments in Samarra for as long as possible.
Voltare had Doctors dead to rights.
Except for one statement about “amusing the patient” while he heals on his own.
Amuse…sure…
https://global-help.org/products/great-medical-disasters/
My father suffered several TIAs over several years. I was present for a couple of them. This sure sounds like a TIA.
Whatever it was, since astronaut Fincke is so far the only subject to have had a confirmed episode like this in space and is willing to risk experiencing it again, it seems like he should be a strong candidate for another long term mission imho. I would ban him from any spacewalk activity, but the opportunity to study him carefully specifically to see if this experience repeats and if so better diagnose a root cause seems like an opportunity, not a risk. And by preparing an experimental support program to perform superior diagnosis should it be necessary we would be developing medical capabilities we really do and will need going forward.
My Dad also had PBAs…he’d laugh, then cry for no reason. Doctors all but kept my family in the poor house, as it were.