The astronaut who prompted NASA’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said Friday that doctors still don’t know why he suddenly fell sick at the International Space Station.

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.

He was sitting at the lunch table on the station, a tray of food half-finished, when everything went wrong.

“It was completely out of the blue,” Mike Fincke told flight surgeons and reporters after he returned to Earth; then, in the span of seconds, he suddenly couldn’t speak space and his crewmates saw him go into distress. Six fellow crew members crowding around an unresponsive partner, an onboard ultrasound brought out within minutes, and a cancelled spacewalk that rippled through the Expedition schedule — those were the concrete, observed facts of the night of Jan. 7.

“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.”

“My crewmates definitely saw that I was in distress,” he said, with all six gathering around him. “It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds.”

Fincke said he can’t provide any more details about his medical episode. The space agency wants to make sure that other astronauts do not feel that their medical privacy will be compromised if something happens to them, he said.

The space station’s ultrasound machine came in handy when the event occurred, he said, and he’s gone through numerous tests since returning to Earth. NASA is poring through other astronauts’ medical records to see if any related instances might have happened in space, he said.

Fincke identified himself late last month as the one who was sick to end the swirling public speculation.

He still feels bad that his illness caused the spacewalk to be canceled — it would have been his 10th spacewalk but first for crewmate Zena Cardman — and resulted in an early return for her and their two other crewmates. SpaceX brought them back on Jan. 15, more than a month early, and they went straight to the hospital.

“I’ve been very lucky to be super healthy. So this was very surprising for everyone,” he said.

Fincke stopped apologizing to everybody after NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman ordered him to stop.

“This wasn’t you. This was space, right?” his colleagues assured him. “You didn’t let anybody down.”

Ever the optimist, he’s holding out hope that he can return to space one day.

今年早些时候，美国国家航空航天局（NASA）首次因突发医疗状况从国际空间站紧急撤离人员。近日，当事人迈克·芬克公开表示，尽管已返回地球并接受了大量检查，但医生至今仍未查明其发病原因。

芬克曾四度飞天。他回忆道，事发时是1月7日，他刚吃完晚餐，正在为第二天的太空行走做准备。突然，他无法说话，也记不起当时是否有疼痛感，但焦虑的队友们看到他出现不适后迅速行动起来，并向地面的飞行外科医生求助。

当时他正坐在空间站的餐桌旁，餐盘里还剩一半食物，一切突然失控。

“这完全出乎意料，”芬克在返回地球后对飞行外科医生和记者说。短短几秒内，他便丧失了说话能力。队友们看到他陷入痛苦。六名队友围在他身边，几分钟内就取出了舱内超声波设备，一次太空行走被取消，进而影响了整个远征队的日程。

“完全毫无征兆，快得令人难以置信，”他说。

现年59岁的芬克是一名退役空军上校，他表示这一过程持续了约20分钟，之后他感觉恢复正常，至今身体无恙。此前和此后他从未经历过类似情况。

医生已排除心脏病发作的可能，芬克也表示自己并非窒息，但其他可能性仍未排除，或许与他在失重环境中度过的549天有关。当时他已在空间站驻留了五个半月。

芬克表示无法透露更多关于此次医疗事件的细节。他说，NASA希望确保其他宇航员不会觉得一旦出事，自己的医疗隐私会遭到泄露。

他提到，空间站的超声波设备在事发时派上了用场。NASA正在翻阅其他宇航员的医疗记录，以查看太空中是否发生过类似案例。

上个月末，芬克主动承认自己就是那位生病的宇航员，终结了公众的种种猜测。

他仍对因自己生病导致太空行走取消（那本是他第10次太空行走，却是队友泽娜·卡德曼的第一次）以及另外三名队友提前返回感到过意不去。SpaceX于1月15日将他们送回地球，比原计划提前了一个多月，四人直接去了医院。

“我身体超级健康。所以这件事让所有人都很惊讶。”

在NASA新任局长贾里德·艾萨克曼命令他停止道歉之前，芬克一直在向所有人道歉。

“这不是你的错。这是太空的问题，对吧？”同事们安慰他说。“你没有让任何人失望。”

作为永远的乐观主义者，他仍希望有朝一日能重返苍穹。

(Translated by DeepSeek)