The trio will say goodbye to the rest of the space station crew and close the hatch between Soyuz and the Rassvet mooring unit around midnight. Soyuz is expected to disconnect at 3:21 a.m. ET Wednesday and the spacecraft will experience burning in orbit at 6:30 p.m. ET Wednesday. The crew is expected to parachute at 7:28 a.m. ET southeast of Dzhezkazgan. Every step of the crew’s return will be broadcast live on the television channel and on the NASA website. After landing, Vande Hei will travel back to Houston on a Gulfstream aircraft, as other NASA astronauts have done, and the astronauts will return to their training base in Star City, Russia. Joint operations between NASA and Roscosmos at the Russian facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, “continue to go well,” said Joel Montalbano, program director at NASA’s International Space Station, during a March 14 press conference. Montalbano’s remarks came as Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin made a number of fiery postings on social media targeting the United States, including a heavily edited, partly animated video that appeared to threaten space. Rogozin is known to share strange statements on social media. Former astronaut Scott Kelly just recently pulled out of a Twitter war with Rogozin. Vande Hei and Dubrov were launched to the space station in April 2021 and together they have completed 5,680 Earth orbits and traveled more than 150 million miles around our planet. Vande Hei has broken the record for the longest solo space flight by an American astronaut, which was previously set by Kelly in 340 days. The extended mission will allow researchers to study the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body, such as the Twins Study in which Kelly and his twin Mark participated during Scott’s long life. The information gathered from extensive missions could better prepare NASA to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars, according to the agency. This was Vande Hei’s second space flight, so it has a total of 523 days in space. It was Dubrov’s first flight. Shkaplerov, meanwhile, arrived on the space station in October with a Russian director and actor who shot the first film in space. Returning to Earth a few weeks after their arrival, Shkaplerov remained on the space station, completing his fourth space mission with a total of 708 days in space.
Change of management
Shkaplerov handed over command of the International Space Station to NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn on Tuesday morning. Before giving Marshburn a ceremonial “key” to the space station signaling a change of administration, Shkaplerov pondered his time in space, including some of the situations the crew encountered. “It’s like some satellites tried to kill us,” he said, causing the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts in the crowd to laugh. His comment was about a Russian anti-satellite test that wreaked havoc in November. It also reinforced the close and family-friendly nature of the space station crew, especially given the current geopolitical tensions. “People have problems on Earth,” he said. “On the orbit, we are a crew, and I think the ISS is a symbol of friendship, cooperation (and) our flexible future in space exploration. Thank you very much, my crew. You are like space brothers and space. sister.” Marshburn said it was an honor and a privilege to accept the management of the space station, “continuing international cooperation and this legacy of space flight”. Marsburn thanked Scapleroff for the “wonderful commander.” “I can not thank you enough for your commitment to station safety, your crew safety, your humor, your friendship and your commitment to flight control teams around the world,” Marshburn said.
Comings and goings
After the departure of Vande Hei, Dubrov and Shkaplerov, the rest of the space station crew includes Marshburn, along with NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Kayla Barron, European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer and the recently arrived Russian cosmonauts, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov. When the Russian trio moored at the space station on March 15, they sparked speculation wearing bright yellow space uniforms decorated in blue. He questioned whether the three were showing solidarity with Ukraine by wearing its national colors and rebuking the invasion of their own government. So far no definitive answer has been given. The space station will not accommodate a seven-member crew for long. The private Axiom Space-1 mission, carrying former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and US crew members Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy, will be launched to the space station no earlier than April 6. The Axiom crew will return after 10 days. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission will then bring NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins, as well as ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, to the space station later in April. There are currently no space walks in the program during this period of intense crew rotation. NASA continues to search for “more than normal” amount of water discovered inside the Maurer helmet after its first spacewalk on March 23. A thin layer of water was found inside his helmet as soon as he returned to the airlock almost seven hours after the start of the spacewalk. The crew is trying to figure out what caused it and figure out how to fix it. “Our organization and international partners are constantly identifying and mitigating the dangers of human spaceflight,” NASA said in a statement. CNN’s Jackie Wattles contributed to this report.
