NASA did its best to protect the identity of a sick astronaut aboard the space shuttle Atlantis over the weekend, but when it leads to a major mission change it can pose a bit of a challenge.

When mission managers announced on Saturday that European Space Agency astronaut Hans Schlegel, of Germany, would be pulled from what is now today’s spacewalk to deliver the European-built Columbus lab to the International Space Station, they refrained from citing the 56-year-old Schlegel as the ill astronaut outright, citing medical confidentiality.

But ESA officials later let his name slip, largely because it was fairly obvious that Hans, a veteran spaceflyer, was the ill astronaut in question (Why else pull him from the spacewalk roster?) and even shed some light on his brief sickness early Sunday. If you were watching close, the ESA loosed a quick quote from its top space doctor on its Columbus mission blog, but has since replaced it with an official statement.

While the exact nature of Schlegel’s illness remains confidential, many astronauts suffer from brief bouts of space sickness – ranging from a few hours to a few days – as they adapt to life in Earth orbit. Schlegel, himself, has said that he was looking forward to learning how his body would respond to his return to space 14 years after his first shuttle flight in 1993.

Meanwhile, the space reporter pool here at the Johnson Space Center took measures Sunday to ensure they did not catch whatever illnesses abound:

Photo courtesy of Robert Pearlman, editor of collectSPACE.com.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 5:50 am and is filed under Society, Space & Astronomy, Strange News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.