NASA astronaut Mike Fincke who left the first space station revealed that he could not speak

The astronaut who left NASA for the first time this year said on Friday that doctors do not know why he fell ill on the International Space Station.

Four-time astronaut Mike Fincke said he was having dinner on Jan. 7 after preparing for space travel the next day when it happened.

He could not speak and did not remember the pain, but his worried colleagues jumped into action after seeing him in distress and called for help from the flight surgeons on the ground.

“It was totally unexpected. It was incredibly fast,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press from Houston’s Johnson Space Center.

Fincke, 59, a retired Air Force officer, said the episode lasted about 20 minutes and he felt fine afterward. He said he still does it. He has never encountered anything like that before or since.

Doctors ruled it a heart attack and Fincke said he was not suffocating, but everything else is still on the table and could be related to his 549 days without weight.

He had been at his latest station for 5 and a half months when trouble struck “like lightning.”

He said: “My co-workers saw that I was depressed,” he said, all six of them surrounding him. “Everything was on the floor in seconds.”

Fincke said he could not provide further details about his health episode. The space agency wants to make sure other astronauts don’t feel their medical privacy will be compromised if something happens to them, he said.

He said the space station’s ultrasound machine was helpful when the incident happened, he said he has gone through many tests since returning to Earth.

NASA is examining the medical records of other astronauts to see if there are any related incidents that may have occurred in space, he said.

Fincke revealed late last month that he was the one who was sick to end public speculation.

He is still upset that his illness caused the space tunnel to be canceled – it would have been his 10th spacewalk but for co-worker Zena Cardman – and led to an early return for him and two other colleagues.

SpaceX brought them back on Jan. 15, with more than a month to go, they went to the hospital.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have a very good health. So this surprised everyone,” he said.

Fincke stopped apologizing to everyone after new NASA administrator Jared Isaacman ordered him to stop.

It wasn’t you. This was a space, wasn’t it?” his colleagues assured him. “You didn’t disappoint anyone.”

Always an optimist, he hopes to return to space one day.