CBS News
Back from space, NASA crew discusses mission, but declines to address post-flight medical issue
Three NASA astronauts who just wrapped up a 235-day mission to the International Space Station discussed their flight with reporters Friday, but steadfastly refused to comment on a medical issue of some sort that resulted in one astronaut spending the night in a hospital after landing.
The unidentified astronaut flew back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston the day after splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Oct. 25, rejoining their crewmates. But NASA, citing medical privacy issues, provided no details other than to say the astronaut “is in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members.”
SpaceX
“I know there may be some interest in our post-flight medical event, where we diverted to a hospital,” Crew 8 pilot Mike Barratt, a physician-astronaut, told reporters Friday. “You know, space flight is still something we don’t fully understand. We’re finding things that we don’t expect sometimes, and this was one of those times.
“We’re still piecing things together on this. And so to maintain medical privacy and to let our processes go forward in an orderly manner, this is all we’re going to say about that event at this time.”
Barratt, Crew 8 commander Matt Dominick, astronaut Jeanette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin were launched from the Kennedy Space Center on March 3 and docked at the space station two days later. They returned to Earth last month after an extended stay in space.
Barratt, Dominick and Epps all appeared healthy and in good spirits Friday as they continue their re-adjustment to gravity. Grebenkin flew back to Moscow shortly after splashdown, but in a social media post just after the crew’s return to Earth, he was smiling and said to be in good shape.
While the presumably minor medical issue remains a mystery, the crew shared highlights of their stay in space, including details about a water leak during preparations for a June spacewalk that triggered a blizzard in the space station’s airlock.
NASA
After a spacesuit “discomfort” problem forced Dominick and astronaut Tracy Dyson to call off a planned spacewalk on June 13, Dyson and Barratt suited up for another excursion on June 24.
While floating in the airlock with the outer hatch open to space, an umbilical failed to “seat” properly and water began spewing into the chamber.
“Oh, my goodness,” Dyson said when she noticed the water spewing out. “There’s a lot of water flowing. There’s literally water everywhere. … I’ve got ice all over my helmet.”
“It was not a trivial leak,” Barratt reflected Friday. “Anybody who was watching NASA TV at the time could see there was basically a snowstorm, a blizzard spewing from the air lock, because we already had the hatch open. We were seeing flakes of ice in the air lock. Tracy was seeing a lot of them on her helmet, on her gloves, whatnot.
“So it was…dramatic is the right word, to be real honest. I think literally, Tracy’s actions were nowhere short of a heroic to be able to re-mate that umbilical with her hands covered with ice and kind of being vision impaired and getting the air lock closed.”
Barratt said he grabbed her space-suited legs so Dyson could “lever that thing closed, and she just made it happen. So yeah, there was a bit of drama. Everything worked out fine. And again, normal processes and procedures saved our bacon.”
NASA plans to resume spacewalks in January, and Barratt said the suits will be in good shape.
“I think we’re leaving them a brand new umbilical, a really clean interface on that side where we had the problem and the suits are charged and really ready to go,” he said. “So I think we are more than ready for the next EVA campaign. I just wish we were doing it.”
That said, he pointed out, “none of our spacesuits are spring chickens. And so we will expect to see some hardware issues with repeated use. So again, it’s one of those things that we are always, at every second, ready to stop…or work a contingency procedure.”
As for the suit “discomfort” issue that Dominick reported prior to the earlier spacewalk attempt, no details were provided.
“We’re still reviewing it and trying to figure all the details out,” Dominick said.
CBS News
After Hurricane Helene, a North Carolina woman uses the power of social media to reunite families with old photographs lost in the storm
We’ve seen the images of destruction, debris and flooding left behind from Hurricane Helene. But other images also came out of the storm: family photos – snapshots of happy memories and important milestones – left behind in the mess.
After the deadly hurricane in October, Taylor Schenker, who lives in Canton, North Carolina, nearby hard-hit Asheville, found herself with about 200 family photos that didn’t belong to her.
It started after the storm. Schenker’s house weathered Helene well, but she said her friend’s entire home was destroyed by flooding from the Swannanoa River. At least 220 people across six states died in the hurricane, including over 40 in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville.
Schenker and her friend went for a walk to check out the home, which was one of the many in Asheville that was destroyed.
“We spent about four hours digging through the mud, looking for any belongings of hers we could find, because her house literally just doesn’t exist anymore,” Schenker told CBS News last month. “And during that process, I found about four of five individual photographs and we laid out the photos – along with some clothes and we found an American flag – along the bank, hoping they would be reunited with people.”
Vanessa Graham via Photos from Helene
Schenker said thinking about the photos she left behind kept her up that night. “Just thinking, ‘Here are these little photographs that miraculously made it through all of this and now are sitting here and what if it rains or what if the wind blows and they aren’t able to be reunited with their family,'” she said. “That would be such a shame because they made it through all of this. And I know how special a memory like that can really be for somebody.”
So, Taylor went back the next day to get the photos and ended up finding more. She said it was obvious the photos belonged to multiple families.
“It was [a photo of] a middle school basketball team. It was a photo of a beloved dog. I found a wedding photo of a bride hugging somebody,” she said. “You take photos because you have a moment you want to remember and so, they did all seem just special.”
Realizing how many important family memories she now had in her possession, she started the Photos from Helene Instagram page — a virtual lost-and-found. She hoped people would recognize the photos on her page and word of mouth would help reunite them with their rightful owners.
The Instagram page is filled with school portraits, Christmas cards, images of childhood friends and families on vacation. She even found a photo of Michael Jordan dunking the ball that a local man says his dad snapped years ago.
Schenker took them home, dusted them off and categorized them in folders and bins for safekeeping until they could be returned to their owners.
Schenker said she found about 100 photos herself, but picked up about another 100 from other people who found them, including search and rescue teams. At the time of our interview in late October, she said she had returned about 15% of the photos she has collected. She still adds new photos to Instagram daily.
Each reunion is a heartwarming reminder that what she’s doing is important. “Being able to have that moment where you hand something so special to somebody and then also just give them a hug – because they’ve lost likely their entire home in this situation – it’s such a privilege to have an insight into this moment in their lives through these photographs and be able to give them back to them,” she said.
Schenker mails photos to people who are no longer in the area, but she also hand delivers the ones that belong to families who stayed close by. In one case, a college-aged son found his family’s photos on her Instagram, reached out to Schenker and connected her with his mom.
“We have now found five photos of this one family, of these two sons, and when I met with the mom to reunite the photos, she shared that one of her sons had actually passed,” Schenker said. “And so, when they lost their home, they lost all memory of this child. Which is absolutely devastating in addition to the devastation that has already happened.”
She said she recently went for another so-called photo walk – where she digs through debris to find images – and recognized the woman’s late son in yet another photo.
Becky and Nancy Tate, a mother-daughter duo, also found old family photos through the Instagram page. “It was an extremely strange feeling to just be scrolling on social media and randomly see a picture of me when I was 10 in front of a Christmas tree,” Nancy Tate told CBS News on Instagram. “That’s how I found out about Photos from Helene, a total fluke and scrolling and seeing a picture of me covered in dirt.”
Tate family via Photos from Helene
“A very surreal feeling to know all of your belongings and photos have been lost, and then to realize that some person you’ve never met is trying to help people locate these pictures, just out of the kindness of their heart,” Nancy said. “That truly sums up the Asheville community.”
Nancy tagged her mom in the Instagram comments, saying her mom cried when she saw it. Becky told CBS News she felt a combination of joy and shock – “a time of high adrenaline and disbelief.”
Schenker said that many families who lived in the same neighborhood before the hurricane have recognized other people’s photos on the Photos from Helene Instagram page and helped connect each other to Schenker.
“The process is definitely fulfilling,” she said. “It’s fun to see the moment that a photograph is reunited and to see the people in the comments tagging each other and saying, ‘Hey, is this you?’ or ‘Oh my gosh, you just reminded me of this moment in my life that I had totally forgotten about.'”
She said she chose her Instagram’s name because most of the photos we’ve seen come out of the hurricane show the devastation left behind – but her photos from Helene are happy memories of Asheville and the lives lived there.
“You still can’t go to the grocery store without seeing piles of debris,” she said. “And I think that has definitely made me and others celebrate these wins even bigger. Because you have to in order to get through the day to day now.”
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