Despite geopolitical tensions over the Ukraine crisis, an American astronaut will be coming back to Earth on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the International Space Station on March 30.
He will be accompanied by two Russian cosmonauts on the journey back home.
NASA's Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov have long been scheduled to return with a touchdown in Kazakhstan on March 30. The US astronaut has broken his country’s record for the longest stay in space by an individual after having spent 340 days on the space station. The world record of 438 continuous days in space belongs to Russia.
"I can tell you for sure: Mark is coming home on that Soyuz," Joel Montalbano, the manager of NASA's International Space Station program, said during a news conference. "We are in communication with our Russian colleagues.”
The United States has led western countries in imposing new economic sanctions on Russia and is also supplying military equipment and ammunition to Ukraine. Russia and its federal space agency, Roscosmos, have denounced the sanctions and withdrawn from several longstanding partnerships in response.
Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Saturday that there was an urgent need for the sanctions to be lifted as they could disrupt the operation of Russian spacecraft servicing the ISS and keeping it in orbit.
The Russian segment of the station — which helps correct its orbit — could be affected, causing the 500-tonne structure to "fall down into the sea or onto land", the Roscosmos chief wrote on Telegram.
In retaliation to the sanctions, Roscosmos announced late last month that it was halting launches of Russian-built Soyuz rockets from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. And in early March, the agency said it would no longer sell Russian rocket engines to American companies.
Such moves led to some speculation that the International Space Station program, in which Russia is a key and founding partner, may be in trouble as well. But Montalbano said that the orbiting lab is operating as usual despite the strained geopolitical relations between Moscow and Washington.
He also said that the Ukraine conflict has not compromised morale or professionalism among the seven astronauts — four Americans, two Russians and one German — currently living on the international space station.
