NASA astronaut Mike Fincke suddenly couldn't speak in space. His medical scare remains a mystery - CNA

Four-time space flier Mike Fincke said he was having dinner on Jan 7 after preparing for a spacewalk when he suddenly fell sick.

In his image provided by NASA, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke is helped out of the SpaceX Crew-11 capsule after they re-entered the Earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, California, on Jan 15, 2026. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP, File)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: The astronaut who prompted NASA’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said Friday (Mar 27) 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 having dinner on Jan 7 after preparing for a spacewalk the next day when it happened. He couldn’t talk and remembered 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 afterwards. He said he still does. He never experienced anything like that before or since.

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“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 that might have occurred 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 cancelled - 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 apologising 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.