Mark Vande Hei, who had been on the International Space Station since April last year, has finally returned on a Russian spacecraft, as planned.
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After a month of threats and controversies between the US and Russian space agencies, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei has finally returned to Earth this Wednesday in a Soyuz spacecraft with two more cosmonauts, as planned from the beginning. Vande Hei has been on the International Space Station (ISS) since April 2021, when he took off from Kazakhstan on another Soyuz rocket. Originally, he was to remain on board for only six months, the standard length of voyages; however, in September, NASA announced that the astronaut’s stay was being extended to better accommodate a few visiting tourists and a Russian film crew that visited the facility late last year.
Thanks to this extension, Vande Hei has become the American who has spent the longest time in space: 355 days.
The original plan always called for Vande Hei to return in a Soyuz, but since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the trip has been up in the air. At the start of the conflict, NASA said it would continue to work closely with the Russian space agency Roscosmos as usual to maintain normal space station operations. And that included Vande Hei’s return trip on a Russian ship.
However, things changed on March 5 when RIA Novosti, a Russian state news program, shared a video through its social networks that included images of Vande Hei together with Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, the two cosmonauts. Russians with whom he was on the ISS and who would also accompany him on the return trip. However, the video was edited in such a way that many saw how the two cosmonauts left the American behind, to finally show the images of the Russian modules of the ISS separating from the rest of the facilities.
Although the program later clarified that it was a joke, the news that Roscosmos was going to leave Vande Hei stranded on the ISS spread like wildfire. It didn’t help that Russian space agency director Dimitri Rogozin also shared the video, in addition to his threats by him to drop the station ” over the US or Europe ” if Russia withdrew from the program. Finally, the Russian government denied that Vande Hei was going to be left without transportation. “The soon-to-be-returned American astronaut will do so as scheduled aboard Russia’s space capsule on March 30,” TASS, another Russian state news agency, wrote in a report.
NASA also reiterated that operations would continue as normal at a press conference on March 14. «The reality is that Mark Vande Hei will return home on March 30 with Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov. Point”, said Joel Montalbano, ISS program manager at NASA, during the conference when asked about the video’s alleged threat. “There really isn’t much to add. We have confirmation from our Russian colleagues.” Montalbano also stressed that NASA and Roscosmos need each other to continue operating the space station and that there were no immediate plans to end that partnership. “We are not seeing any impact from what is happening around us. … We are aware of what is happening, but we can do our job to continue operations », he said.
Finally, this Wednesday, the American astronaut and his Russian colleagues boarded the Soyuz and landed in Kazakhstan at 13:28 Spanish time. After traveling to Karaganda by helicopter, Vande Hei will board a NASA plane that will take him back to Houston, Texas.
The ISS crew has shown its unity throughout the conflict, and images of camaraderie could even be seen after the arrival of the new batch of Russian cosmonauts, who appeared in overalls with the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Separately, on Tuesday, the crew held a change of command ceremony, with former commander Shkaplerov handing over the symbolic key to the space station to NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, before the return of the Soyuz. During the ceremony, Shkaplerov made a veiled comment about the conflict: “I am proud to have been the commander of this excellent crew,” he said. People have problems on Earth. In orbit… we are a crew.”
