NASA faces medical mystery as veteran astronaut suddenly loses speech in space

Artemis II lunar mission is in its final countdown, but NASA is unable to solve the medical mystery as four-time veteran Mike Fincke suddenly lost the ability to speak in space.

Earlier this year, the International Space Station saw its first-ever emergency medical evacuation and the astronaut at the heart of the crisis remained a mystery to medical experts.

Fincke recently shared details of the alarming incident. On January 7, while eating dinner and preparing for a spacewalk scheduled for the next morning, he was suddenly struck by an inexplicable illness without showing any signs of pain.

According to Fincke, the episode came like “a fast lightning bolt” and approximately lasted 20 minutes. As soon as this episode passed, he felt totally fine and had never experienced anything similar before or since.

"It was completely out of the blue. It was just amazingly quick," Fincke, a retired Air Force colonel, said.

“My crewmates definitely saw that I was in distress. It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds,” he added.

Doctors are still baffled by the nature of this medical emergency. According to medical experts, the sudden loss of speech could not be due to a heart attack as Fincke was not choking at that moment.

But they have linked the medical mystery to his 549 days of weightlessness as Fincke was 5.5 months into his latest space station stay.

After Fincke’s medical evacuation on an urgent basis, he did not complete the scheduled spacewalk, which would have been his tenth and a first for crewmate Zena Cardman.

On January 15, SpaceX brought astronauts back on Earth over a month ahead of schedule. Immediately, they underwent medical tests.