A NASA astronaut stuck a Russian trip again to Earth on Wednesday after a U.S. file 355 days on the Global Area Station, returning with two cosmonauts to a global torn aside by means of warfare.
Mark Vande Hei landed in a Soyuz pill in Kazakhstan along the Russian Area Company’s Pyotr Dubrov, who additionally spent the previous 12 months in house, and Anton Shkaplerov. Wind blew the pill onto its facet following landing, and the trio emerged into the past due afternoon solar one after the other.
Vande Hei, the closing one out, grinned and waved as he was once carried to a reclining chair out within the open Kazakh steppes.
“Stunning out right here,” mentioned Vande Hei, hanging on a face masks and ballcap.
Invoice Ingalls/NASA by means of Getty Pictures
Regardless of escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Vladimir Putin’s warfare with Ukraine, Vande Hei’s go back adopted standard procedures. A small NASA group of docs and different group of workers was once readily available for the landing and deliberate to go back right away to Houston with the 55-year-old astronaut.
Even sooner than Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Vande Hei mentioned he was once keeping off the topic along with his two Russian crewmates. Regardless of getting alongside “superbly … I’m now not positive we actually wish to cross there,” he mentioned.
It was once the primary style of gravity for Vande Hei and Dubrov since their Soyuz release on April 9 closing 12 months. Shkaplerov joined them on the orbiting lab in October, escorting a Russian movie team up for a temporary keep. To house that consult with, Vande Hei and Dubrov doubled the period in their keep.
Earlier than departing the distance station, Shkaplerov embraced his fellow astronauts as “my house brothers and house sister.”
“Other people have downside on Earth. On orbit … we’re one team,” Shkaplerov mentioned in a are living NASA TV broadcast Tuesday. The distance station is a logo of “friendship and cooperation and … long term of exploration of house.”
The warfare tensions bubbled over in different spaces of house with the suspension of Eu satellite tv for pc launches on Russian rockets and the Europe-Russia Mars rover caught on Earth for every other two years.
Invoice Ingalls/NASA by means of Getty Pictures
Vande Hei surpassed NASA’s earlier file for the longest unmarried spaceflight by means of 15 days. Dubrov moved into Russia’s best 5, neatly in need of the 437-day, 17-hour marathon by means of a cosmonaut-physician aboard the Nineteen Nineties Mir house station that continues to be the arena file.
“Damaged information imply we’re making growth,” mentioned NASA’s earlier house staying power champ, retired astronaut Scott Kelly, whose 340-day challenge resulted in 2016.
Like Kelly, Vande Hei underwent clinical trying out throughout his lengthy keep to additional NASA’s quest to get astronauts again to the moon and directly to Mars. He mentioned day-to-day meditation helped him cope throughout the challenge, two times so long as his first station stint 4 years previous.
“I’ve had an indoor task 24-7 for nearly a 12 months so I’m having a look ahead to being out of doors it doesn’t matter what roughly climate,” Vande Hei mentioned in a up to date sequence of NASA movies. As for meals, he’s having a look ahead to creating a cup of espresso for himself and spouse Julie, and digging into guacamole and chips.
Final on board: 3 Russians who arrived two weeks in the past and 3 American citizens and one German, who’ve been aboard since November. Their replacements are due in 3 weeks by means of SpaceX. Subsequent week, SpaceX will fly 3 wealthy businessmen and their ex-astronaut escort to the station for a weeklong consult with organized by means of the personal Axiom Area.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX started transporting NASA astronauts to the station in 2020, 9 years after the go back and forth program ended. Throughout that hole, Russia presented the lone taxi carrier, with NASA doling out tens of thousands and thousands of greenbacks in step with Soyuz seat. Vande Hei’s trip was once a part of a barter trade with Houston-based Axiom.
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