Transcript

NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 Post-Splashdown News Conference (Jan. 15, 2026)

From NASA · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 35 min · 5,540 words · 66 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 Post-Splashdown News Conference (Jan. 15, 2026)", an episode of NASA published January 15, 2026 (35 min, about 5,540 words). It mentions 11 people, works and ideas, including Jared Isaacman, Crew 11, Joel Montalbano, International Space Station, Artemis.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Crew 11, Jared Isaacman, Joel Montalbano, International Space Station
  2. – 10:00: Artemis, Crew 12, Crew 11, International Space Station
  3. – 15:00: Artemis, International Space Station, Crew 12
  4. – 20:00: Crew 12, Crew 11, Joel Montalbano, Artemis
  5. – 25:00: Artemis, International Space Station, Mike Fincke
  6. – 30:00: Crew 11, International Space Station
  7. – 34:48: Jared Isaacman, Crew 11

Notable quotes from "NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 Post-Splashdown News Conference (Jan. 15, 2026)"

  • Press secretary, and I'll be moderating today's news conference. We are joined today by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Space Operations.
    about Jared Isaacman · at
  • Past five months aboard the International Space Station, crew 11 completed a series of demanding and productive mission objectives. The crew spent more than 850 hours on scientific studies, including.
    about Crew 11 · at
  • Benefits humanity on Earth and benefits and teaches us for exploration for what we're going to use in the Artemis program as we go back to the moon and to Mars. Just a huge effort across the board by the.
    about Artemis · at
  • Great. And with that, we'll move into questions. Our first question comes from Bill Harwood with CBS news.
    about Big George · at
  • That would prevent that. And it looks like you're really trying to do it. You're trying to get Artemis two off in the February window. But if you move up crew 12, there has to be some minimum separation, I would.
    about Crew 12 · at
  • We're flying the crew 12 off of Space Launch Complex 40. And from a standpoint, this is what we're going to spend the next few days on of picking a new.
    about Joel Montalbano · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Jared Isaacman — Person · Main speaker (NASA Administrator) · 3 mentions · first at
    Delivers opening remarks on Crew-11 splashdown, crew health status, and parallel planning for Crew-12 and Artemis II.
  • Joel Montalbano — Person · Main speaker (NASA Space Operations leadership) · 3 mentions · first at
    Provides operational details about the early return decision, landing conditions, ISS science impacts, and Crew-12 logistics.
  • Big George — Person · Moderator / NASA spokesperson · 2 mentions · first at
    Introduces the briefing, identifies speakers, and manages the Q&A flow with media.
  • Mike Fincke — Person · Referenced astronaut (Crew-11 member) · 2 mentions · first at
    Identified as a Crew-11 astronaut; later referenced by a reporter regarding the mission being 'bittersweet.'
    This is. This mission brought crew 11 safely home. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman Mike Fincke, Jaxa astronaut Kim Yu and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov are all safe and in good spirits. All crew members.
  • Zena Cardman — Person · Referenced astronaut (Crew-11 member) · 1 mention · first at
    Named as one of the four Crew-11 members who safely returned on Dragon after the ISS expedition.
    This is. This mission brought crew 11 safely home. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman Mike Fincke, Jaxa astronaut Kim Yu and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg.
  • Kim Yu — Person · Referenced astronaut (Crew-11 member; JAXA) · 1 mention · first at
    Named as the JAXA astronaut on Crew-11 who returned safely; included in the crew health/status update.
    Crew 11 safely home. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman Mike Fincke, Jaxa astronaut Kim Yu and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov are all safe and in good spirits. All crew members are currently undergoing the.
  • Oleg Platonov — Person · Referenced cosmonaut (Crew-11 member; Roscosmos) · 1 mention · first at
    Named as the Roscosmos crew member returning on Crew-11; part of the international crew composition discussed.
    Crew 11 safely home. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman Mike Fincke, Jaxa astronaut Kim Yu and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov are all safe and in good spirits. All crew members are currently undergoing the.

Concepts & topics

  • Artemis — Concept · Program discussed · 11 mentions · first at
    NASA's program for returning to the moon and future Mars exploration

Places & events

  • Crew 11 — Event · Mission discussed · 12 mentions · first at
    Primary mission discussed, involving astronauts returning from the International Space Station
  • International Space Station — Place · Mission location · 5 mentions · first at
    Primary location where Crew 11 conducted their mission
    Appropriate to do so. Over the past five months aboard the International Space Station, crew 11 completed a series of demanding and productive mission objectives. The crew spent more than 850 hours on.
  • Crew 12 — Event · Upcoming mission · 10 mentions · first at
    Next planned mission to the International Space Station

Full transcript with timestamps

Good morning, and welcome to NASA's Johnson Space Center for the crew Elevon: post splashdown news conference. I'm George Alderman, NASA's deputy press secretary, and I'll be moderating today's news conference. We are joined today by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate. We'll be taking questions through our phone bridge. So media interested in taking a question? Please press Star One to enter the queue. Before we get started, we'll begin with opening remarks from Administrator Isaacman.

Good morning everyone. At 3:41 a.m. Eastern time, SpaceX's Dragon Endeavor spacecraft successfully splashed down off the coast of California in pristine weather. This is. This mission brought crew 11 safely home. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman Mike Fincke, Jaxa astronaut Kim Yu yu and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov are all safe and in good spirits. All crew members are currently undergoing the routine post splashdown. Medical evaluation. The crew member of concern is doing fine. We will share updates on their health as soon as it's appropriate to do so. Over the past five months aboard the International Space Station, crew 11 completed a series of demanding and productive mission objectives. The crew spent more than 850 hours on scientific studies, including research on bone loss in microgravity and the long term storage of cryogenic fluids in space, with direct applications in medical and industrial

fields. This work advanced our understanding of long duration spaceflight and contributed valuable research that benefit life here on Earth and further human exploration, to be overwhelmingly clear. Crew 11 was a very successful mission. While this was the first time we had to return crew slightly ahead of schedule, NASA was ready. The team responded quickly and professionally, as did the teams across the agency, working closely with our commercial partners and executed a very safe return. This is exactly why we train.

And this is NASA at its finest. Spaceflight will always carry some degree of uncertainty. That is the nature of exploration fundamentally. It's why we're in space to learn. It's why NASA prepares for the unexpected. So we are ready to respond decisively and safely. The successful return of crew 11 is a direct result of that preparation. I want to personally thank the teams across NASA space, our international partners who made this possible. Your professionalism, discipline and commitment to crew safety were on full display because of your work. Four astronauts are home safe and will soon be reunited with their families. You did this while making preparations for crew 12, for Artemis two, and doing the other things at NASA while we pursue our great mission of science and discovery. Well done. Now I'll turn it over to Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for Space Operations, Mission

Directorate. Thank you, Jared, and thank you again for joining us on this Dragon Crew 11 splashdown press brief. Just a couple of things. Awesome landing. We had the winds at the landing site were less than three knots. The wave period was very small. I think we saw about a 2.5ft, but just extremely perfect landing opportunity today. And it was awesome to see the team take advantage of it and work towards this. It was just about a week ago that the decision was made to bring this crew home early. I can tell you we used a standard processes, the nominal landing support, the nominal landing support from NASA space, the international partners. The team meticulously went through all the processes to get ready for landing, and we executed the same processes and same landing support that we would have done if we brought this crew home in late February. So just a huge thanks to everybody. And you saw the

the result of that today. This crew was in space just under 170 days. They performed a little less than 900 hours of science experiments on board. Those are hands on science experiments. And that encompasses about 140 different experiments. They saw five spacecrafts arrive, three spacecraft depart. And the work we did on the International Space Station for this expedition, as well as others, benefits humanity on Earth and benefits and teaches us for exploration for what we're going to use in the Artemis program as we go back to the moon and to Mars. Just a huge effort across the board by the team. In closing, I want to just thank the team. I do say one thing that we did make a decision prior to today, a couple of days earlier, that we were bringing the crew to a medical facility in the San Diego, you know, off the San Diego area. And so the crew will stay there. They'll stay there overnight, and we expect

to bring the crew back to Houston on Friday, obviously, pending the medical. And, you know, we do this. We bring the crew there, we do the medical activities that Doctor Polk talked about with you a couple of days ago. Things we can only do on Earth. We're also doing the post-flight data collection on this crew. Every crew has a number of things that they've signed up for. We collect the data and we use that to learn, help us in exploration. Also give the crew some rest, right? It's been a busy time for them. We've been working them extremely hard throughout the expedition. It's been a long day. Give them some rest.

Everything. With that, they'll be staying overnight. So with that, I'll hand it back over to George.

Great. And with that, we'll move into questions. Our first question comes from Bill Harwood with CBS news.

And with that, we'll move into questions. Our first question comes from Bill Harwood with CBS news.

Hey, Bill Harwood, can you guys hear me. Loud and clear? Thank you very much. This is I've got a crew. 12 Artemis two. Question. Since crew 11 is on the ground and you're looking at moving up crew.

First question, I'm from. I'm sorry. I'm hearing some crosstalk. Are y'all hearing me? Okay. Can you guys hear me?

We hear you reasonably well. Want me to try again? Just. If we were getting your question. If you want to complete it.

Yeah. Let me. I'm sorry about that. Yeah, it's a crew. 12 Artemis two. Question with Elevon: down on the ground and crew 12 being accelerated, I guess what I'm wondering is what sort of separation you need between Artemis two and crew 12, in terms of the crew staging, you've got comms with DSN and Tetris and all that kind of stuff. I mean, there must be some minimum separation to avoid the kind of overlap that would prevent that. And it looks like you're really trying to do it. You're trying to get Artemis two off in the February window. But if you move up crew 12, there has to be some minimum separation, I would think. I'm just I'm just wondering how realistic it is.

Both of those missions can get off in early February. Thanks. Well, maybe I can. I can start and, Joel, if you want to give maybe some of the technical components to that, like on on comms and such, I would just say that this is exactly what we should be doing at NASA. I mean, we have the means as an agency, and it should be expected of our agency to be able to bring our astronauts home at any time, as required under circumstances like this, which is exactly what we did today with crew 11, while making preparations to pull forward our next mission like like crew 12, while also progressing on our Artemis two campaign for what is going to be probably one of the most important human spaceflight missions in the last half century. I mean, I, I took a briefing a couple of weeks ago on what happens in that, what I would describe as the extremely unlikely event that we need to use to suit up rooms at nearly

the same time. And I was like, what a great problem it would be for the agency to have that. Now, what I would say is every one of these campaigns, while there is some overlap of some personnel and roles, our parallel efforts, we bring our crew home. We make preparations for our next crew to the International Space Station with crew 12. We continue to go through the motions with Artemis two, of which we've already stated. We are not going to specify, you know, which which launch date we are going to pursue within the already published windows until we have Artemis two out at the pad and we get through a wet dress to give us the confidence.

So at this point, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't continue along those parallel paths. And if it comes down to a point in time where we have to find where we have to deconflict between two human space flight missions, that is a a very good problem to have at NASA.

You're exactly right. That's exactly what we're doing. The the Commercial crew and ISIS program are working to look at, you know, what we can accelerate. You have to back up a few days from your launch date, as you know, for static fire, and then you have to do some reconfiguration at Kennedy Space Center in order to support from the Artemis work to the static fire. And so we'll lay out all those timelines, look at how everything is going, and then make the decision as we get a little closer. The teams are already looking stripping down.

You know what? What makes sense. What we can do. And our next question will come from Marsha Dunn with the Associated Press.

Hello. Good morning. I'm wondering, is the ailing astronaut doing better or worse than before, or did they need extra help getting home? And I'm wondering, is the crew at the hospital yet? Thanks.

As I mentioned in my in my prepared remarks, all crew members right now are they're they're safe. They're in good spirits. They're going through the standard post splashdown medical checks. I believe the helicopter, if it hasn't left the recovery ship, it's imminent to do so. And they're all going to the hospital as we as we had determined days ago as the proper thing to do under the circumstances. But as I mentioned, the crew member in question specifically is doing fine.

And with that, our next question will come from Jeff Foust with Space News. Good morning. I know a formal lessons learned process will come later, but over the last week, has anything come to mind of things that you would do differently if this were to happen again in the future? For example, different procedures, different medical equipment on the station, things like that. Any lessons that have come up in the last week? Thank you.

You know, the team's going to take a look at what happened. And right now nothing is really jumped out. Like I said, we were able to use the standard process for the undocking work and the landing work moving, you know, all the teams over to the West Coast and that's the team, SpaceX team, the the international partners. SpaceX did a lot of work to get us ready. They did some practice runs with the helicopter to the hospital. We contacted the hospital in advance to make sure they were ready, went over everything, part of the the lessons learned and and what we do as part of the next flight readiness review for each mission is to review lessons learned from the past missions.

So we'll do that, and then those lessons will be carried forward. Yeah, I would just I would just layer on to this and say that it is standard process to conduct a thorough debrief. And oftentimes people associate that with what what did we get wrong. And for sure, in any circumstance you're going to capture lessons learned and apply it. I think when we we go through the debrief on this, we're going to we're going to learn a lot about the things we got really we got right and did it very well. And make sure we apply that, you know, in other applications going forward. So this this from my perspective, watching it play out from the time of the original situation developing to get our astronauts safely in the water and on their way to to to medical care, was executed almost near flawlessly.

Our next question will be from Joey Roulette with Reuters. Hey thank you. Question for Jared or Joel. NASA, of course, has said the astronaut has been doing fine and is stable. But was the astronaut never not in a stable condition throughout all of this. And then his second quick question. I'm wondering if this medical experience will inform any kind of research or be published in any paper after all this. Thanks.

I think without going any without going into specifics beyond what was already shared, obviously we took this action because it was a it was a serious medical condition. Right? So, you know, in that respect, it was a serious situation. The astronaut in question is fine right now. Good spirits and going through the proper, you know, the proper medical, the medical checkups really have much more to add to that.

And our next question will come from Will Robinson-smith with Spaceflight Now? Hi. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us this morning to either the administrator or to Joel, before this medical issue came up, the plan for station was for the Cargo Dragon, for Sierra 33 to undock about a day or so after the spacewalk that was planned for today. Will that dragon remains at station until crew 12 arrives. And then just a quick logistics question for crew 12. Launch. Has a date been selected for that? And will he be flying off pad 40 or 39 a thanks.

All right. There were a handful of those in there. We're flying the crew 12 off of Space Launch Complex 40. And from a standpoint, this is what we're going to spend the next few days on of picking a new date for the space 33 undock the HTV Unberth. And then how does that work with respect to crew 12, the teams, a look at it and see what makes sense, which one to go first. But that's open work and forward work for us. Be probably next week before we get some answers on that.

And our next question will be from Anthony Leone with Spectrum News. Hello, and thank you very much for taking our questions this morning. You said that the astronaut suffered a serious medical condition. Would that be enough to prevent him or her from going back into space and doing another mission on the Ís?

Yeah, I would, I would think it's incredibly premature to even, you know, consider that right now the highest priority is, is the, you know, the health and welfare of our of our crew members. They just executed, I mean, a near-perfect mission on orbit. So I said that during the initial during the initial press conference that I think regardless of the phase of flight we were in on the or the the timeline on the expedition, we would arrived at the same conclusion. What crew 11 did to make this so much easier is is executing so well on all of their scientific, scientific objectives. So in that in that case, the crew did a fantastic job. And I think that would reflect well on on future crew selection criteria.

Our next question will come from Jackie Wattles with CNN. Hi, folks. Thanks so much for doing this. So question about ISIS operations while we wait for crew 12 to arrive. I was curious, like what training the cosmonauts have to assist with any operations on the US side? I think I understood at least one cosmonaut may have training on NASA Eva suits. For example, if there's a hardware issue that requires an emergency spacewalk, could you give us some insight into that situation? Thank you so much.

Sure. Generally what we do where we are today is we do emergency training with each crew. So the Russian cosmonauts come over to Houston, we do emergency training. Our US astronauts go over to Moscow and do emergency training there. Sergey Kud-sverchkov does have some basic Eva training. Our plan, if we had you know, there's not any thing on space station where you have a single hardware failure that requires you to take immediate action. You always have a second piece of hardware. There are some things that we'd like to take action pretty quick. And right now the plan would be just to wait for the crew 12 crew to get up there. If we had to do any spacewalks inside. We spent some extra time this last week in training Chris Williams up on some things that he hadn't been trained on, and so the handover from crew 11 to Chris, that took a little extra time, which also added to why we waited the 7 or 8 days. So

that's helped the cosmonauts. We can get them training in real time if we need their help on certain activities. So I believe we're covered and and ready to answer any other questions.

Next question will come from Claire Cameron with the Scientific American. Hi there. I have a couple of questions. One, you mentioned that the that the agency will release information about the nature of the crew members medical issue at a future time. Is there a timeline for that? And then also, how will this incident, if at all, inform the agency's preparation for the Artemis crewed missions? Will there be changes to the medical protocols, both for preflight and during mission?

Well, I think first, I actually don't believe that. I, I said I know the question before of what what information we would share. First, we are very committed to being transparent. But this is a you know, there are some medical privacy considerations here. That said, to the extent that we are in a position to share more information publicly and have the necessary consents, we would do so. I would say almost assuredly we would share information across, you know, other space agencies and commercial space providers. I mean, this is why we're there to learn and things that could have implications on, on the health and wellness of crew members is, is is vitally important to all those that undertake these type of these type of missions in terms of preparation for subsequent missions, whether it's on the International Space Station or on Artemis two. We're always learning here. I mean, again, is why we put our astronauts in

this environment. I would say that there are a lot of circumstances, an incredible amount that we can we can train and prepare for to treat on orbit. And the International Space Station has exceptional capabilities. Our vehicles, be that Dragon or Orion Starliner, have medical kits, there are some circumstances that will develop where you're going to want the option to come home, and we build that into our our flight plans. There are early return options on, on on Artemis two, there are options to bring astronauts back from the space station in hours, not days. So I think that the fact that we did take some extra time in here does speak to the the stability of the situation, how well everyone responded to it. So this is again, this is what we train for. It's built in our planning. It was executed very well. We will capture any, you know, relevant lessons learned to inform preparations for subsequent

missions. But I think I think we're in pretty good shape right now. Our next question will come from Mark Kerrod with Aviation Week and Space Technology.

Yes. Thank you. My question is whether the medical issues surfaced as a result of the research that you're doing aboard the space station, or did this something arise that wasn't connected with a research discovery, but something maybe more immediate?

I mean, the only thing that we've commented on, Doctor Poke spoke about specifically during the press conference is in in Doctor Poke's medical opinion, this was unrelated to any operational environments on on space station. I think that question was was framed with respect to to Eva. Even though that may even those preparations may not have even been applicable for a crew member. But I think like if we're expanding it to, to something even broader than operational preparations in any of the potential research interactions, I would say we don't know at this point. I mean, this is something that could have happened on Earth, you know, completely outside the microgravity environment.

At that point. I don't think we know that versus just being in microgravity versus potentially interactions, experiments. We I just think it would be very premature to draw any conclusions or close any doors at this point.

Next question will be from Jackie Goddard with The Times of London. Yes. Hello. Thank you. I wondered if you could speak a little about the emotional side of all this. Obviously, we saw four very stoic astronauts keeping their spirits up, but the disappointment of cutting short a mission was described by Mike Fincke as bittersweet. Could you just talk us through sort of how you support that psychological side and that sort of emotional element as to how you support the astronauts through that? Thank you.

Well, you know, any any time you have an activity that you plan to complete and you get cut short, obviously it affects you a little bit. These astronauts are incredible. We have some of the best trained astronauts and not just NASA across the international partnership. So they prepared. They talk about their they know that they could have a situation on orbit that could bring them home early. And so it's how you pick up from that and move on. And what we saw in this last week is, you know, they were sad, of course, but they were ready. They helped train Chris. They helped worked with the cosmonauts. They talked to the ground on a regular basis. I would tell you, they were even cracking jokes a couple of times. So, you know, sad. But they're professional and they understand what happens when you fly in space.

Yeah. I would just add that they could have been on a one year expedition, and they would probably have told you that. It's bittersweet coming home. Astronauts really enjoy being in space right now, but I think they should take comfort in the fact they executed extraordinarily well on on an unexpected situation and again, completed, you know, the near majority of their their mission objectives on orbit crew 11 was a successful mission.

Next question will come from Richard two with the post newspaper. Question for Joel, the reduction in crew on station right now, how will that affect ongoing experiments, and how are those remaining experiments prioritized? Thank you.

So a lot of experiments. Good question a lot of experiments on board. There's a time element from when that experiment launched to when it needs to be complete. And so the priority will be to get as many of those timed limited experiments done. So we'll work with Chris. Chris will be prime on that. He knows if he needs help, we can get help from either the ground or from his Russian cosmonaut friends. And so but from a standpoint of sure, there'll be less there's, you know, for less people on board space station right now.

So there will be an impact, but we'll prioritize that on the time. Critical science.

Next question will come from James Dowling Healy with West Hartford Community Interactive.

Good morning, James Dowling Healy, West Hartford Community Interactive I'd just like to start by saying welcome home to crew 11, and I'd like to extend my best wishes to the crew member for a full and speedy recovery. And also, I'd like to congratulate Mr. Isaacman on his confirmation. My question is, how will the medical event impact NASA's staffing priorities on future, longer term missions? Has the likelihood that there will have to be a medical doctor on future long term missions increased, or will non-physician astronauts receive more medical training?

Thank you. I could I could start on that one. It's a good question, by the way. Many it's come up many times of would would circumstances have played out differently had there been a physician that was still on on space station? And I think generally the answer is no. That speaks to the extensive training all the astronauts go through for medical conditions. I mean, extensive training to be prepared for this type of circumstance which again is why crew elevon: responded so well. That said, we do have quite a few physicians that are within in the astronaut corps.

So we have pretty you know, the odds are pretty good that you'll usually have one, you know, up there at times, but I don't think that would have I don't think that would have changed the outcome. All that said, I think when when you look at experience or qualifications, it's generally helpful for for human space flight and for the astronaut corps, especially as we look at longer duration missions where, you know, we're hours away, potentially from returning to Earth from the International Space Station, days away from the moon. But there will be a time that NASA will embark on missions to Mars. And in that circumstance, you know, likely the human body is going to potentially fail before before some of the technology that's enabling it, in which case, having medical professionals, you know, that are available on those type of missions is additive. But I think specific to this mission, I don't think

it would have changed any of the outcomes or any of our decision making. Next question will be from Marcia Smith with Space Policy. Online.com.

Thank you so much for taking my question. You've mentioned several times that this was not an emergency and that in an emergency, an actual emergency, you could get the crew back much more quickly. And I'm just curious, how many places are there that you can land, since weather is always so difficult to predict. So you were very lucky today. You had these pristine conditions for landing, but if you had a real emergency, there must be places other than the Pacific Ocean that you can land. Can you still land, you know, back near Florida, or where could you land in an emergency?

Yeah. So we have the ability to land almost anywhere in the world. We have an agreement with the US military to be there within 24 hours of landing with, with PJs to assist the crew. And so we do have multiple opportunities now. It also can depend on why you're undocking. Right. So if you have a space station emergency you're undocking. Because of that you can wait. There's time and you can just stay in orbit. The Dragon vehicle has a capability of about five days of reflight. You use about a day ish going up. So you do have some time.

If it's a medical thing and you need to get home, you'd come home anywhere in the world and we'd use the US military to get to them as quickly as we can. And then from that, we'd figure out what the next steps would be.

Yeah, I mean that that does speak again to, you know, the stability of the situation because you do have the capability to get in the water within hours. You just ideally want to be in the water in a situation where you can actually help the crew members. So certainly being in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic doesn't serve us very well. But we have we can constantly evaluate splashdown locations with acceptable weather that might be in international locations, but could get a crew member to medical care urgently if necessary. And we're constantly assessing that it wasn't necessary. Obviously in these circumstances.

Next question will be from Manuel Mazzotti with exploration especial. Thank you so much.

The main reason for bringing crew 11 in an anticipated way was to try to have further medical exams on this crew member that was not feeling well. I wonder, are these medical evaluations going to be led by NASA or some other institution? Thank you.

And so we'll partner with the you know, the our flight surgeons have specific training in aerospace medicine. And so they are the leads we work with the hospitals to prior to each landing to kind of brief them on the, you know, on the condition astronaut when they come back. And so it will be led by our flight surgeons. But we'll obviously with the hospital in California, we'll be using their resources. So we'll be working cooperatively.

Our next question comes from Brett Tingley with Space.com. Hey, thanks for taking the time to do this. After what was a long night for you all. This is a question for Jared Isaacman. I'm wondering, having been on multiple spaceflights yourself, how did those experiences inform how you approach this situation, and what was it like being in your current role now? Watching reentry splashdown recovery having been there yourself?

So I would just say, you know, everybody here at NASA obviously is an extraordinary amount of experience preparing for situations that never would have been applicable to any of my previous training. We obviously didn't go to the space station, so I was just happy to observe all of our plans going in motion. As expected, from the time the original situation developed through the successful at least conclusion to the spaceflight component of it today. And I would say do obviously have a lot of experience with Dragon Vehicle. And that's why I was, I think, in a position to follow along and know that we were doing things in a in absolutely the correct way. As for just general reactions of seeing, you know, people that are, you know, astronauts that are happy in space and coming home from it, sure. That I think that triggers a little bit of an emotional reaction for for a lot of us in the room

who who had been through those circumstances, I to me, I think probably the best moment of all was just seeing the reactions of the families that had come here at Johnson Space Center to watch their their loved ones come back safely from space.

Our next question comes from Denise Cho with NBC news. Hi. Thanks very much. I wanted to ask if there were any adjustments made to standard departure or splashdown procedures because of the medical issues, say, to accommodate the needs of the affected crew member. And then are there any updates on the two spacewalks that obviously had to be postponed? Does this raise any new challenges on the station, or are you having to shuffle things around at all?

We did not change any of the undocking procedures. They were to standard procedures that we had planned and used. And then your second question on the Eva. So those two EVAs were not time critical. And so we'll roll those over to the next expedition. But again, neither of those EVAs were time critical. So we'll just roll them over.

And our final question this morning will come from Irene Klotz with Aviation Week.

Irene, please hit your mute button. Sorry about that. Good morning. Are you expecting all four crew members will be released together at the same time from the hospital.

We would expect that to be the plan. Yes. And with that. That concludes today's news conference. Thank you to all the media who joined us and for your continued coverage. We look forward to hearing from the crew in the coming days during their own news conference. Please watch for an upcoming advisory with those details. Until then, thank you and we'll see you next time.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 Post-Splashdown News Conference (Jan. 15, 2026)"?

Jared Isaacman (Main speaker (NASA Administrator)), Joel Montalbano (Main speaker (NASA Space Operations leadership)), Big George (Moderator / NASA spokesperson).

What is discussed in "NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 Post-Splashdown News Conference (Jan. 15, 2026)"?

In order: 0:00 Crew 11, Jared Isaacman, Joel Montalbano, International Space Station; 5:00 Artemis, Crew 12, Crew 11, International Space Station; 10:00 Artemis, International Space Station, Crew 12; 15:00 Crew 12, Crew 11, Joel Montalbano, Artemis; 20:00 Artemis, International Space Station, Mike Fincke; 25:00 Crew 11, International Space Station; 30:00 Jared Isaacman, Crew 11.

What is mentioned in this NASA episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Jared Isaacman, Crew 11, Joel Montalbano, International Space Station, Artemis, Big George. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 Post-Splashdown News Conference (Jan. 15, 2026)"?

The episode runs 35 min; the transcript is about 5,540 words in 66 timestamped sections.

More from NASA

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.