An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts are close to returning to Earth together, despite rising tensions between the United States and Russia over the war in Ukraine. The Russian Soyuz capsule carrying NASA’s Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov was disconnected from the International Space Station at 2:45 p.m. EDT (06:45 GMT) on Wednesday. They are scheduled to parachute into central Kazakhstan almost five hours later. The landing strip is located about 250 miles (400 kilometers) northeast of the Russian space launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:28 a.m. EDT (11:28 GMT). Vande Hei, 55, completing his second mission to the ISS, will have set a record of 355 consecutive days in space in the United States, surpassing the previous record of 340 days set by astronaut Scott Kelly in 2016, according to NASA. The all-time world record for the longest solo stay in space was set by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent more than 14 months on the Mir space station, returning to Earth in 1995. The 40-year-old Dubrov, who was launched to the ISS with Vande Hei last April from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will complete his first space flight, sharing 5,680 Earth orbits and more than 150 million miles in space with Vande Hei, she said. NASA. The 50-year-old Shkaplerov, who has just completed his rotation as the last commander of the ISS, is a veteran of four missions to the orbital outpost, totaling 708 days in space, far surpassing Vande Hei’s 523-day career, according to NASA. The cosmonaut handed over control of the station to NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn during a change of command ceremony. “Even if humans have problems on Earth, we are a crew in orbit and I think the ISS is a symbol of friendship and cooperation and a symbol of the future of space exploration,” Shkaplerov said on Tuesday as he handed over the keys.
Proven relationships
The joint US-Russia return flight from the ISS was closely monitored for indications that the escalation of tensions between Moscow and Washington over the Russian invasion of Ukraine had shifted to long-term cooperation between the two former Cold War adversaries. Announcing US financial sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government on February 24, US President Joe Biden ordered restrictions on high-tech exports to Moscow that he said were designed to “degrade” Russia’s air, industrial including its space program. Dmitry Rogozin, director general of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, later attacked a series of Twitter posts, suggesting that US sanctions could “make” the ISS team work and cause the space station to fall off track. NASA, for its part, said this week that members of the US and Russian ISS crews were well aware of what was happening on Earth, but were cooperating professionally without tension. “For the safety of our astronauts, the working relationship between NASA and our international partners continues,” said Bill Nelson, NASA’s director, during a speech Monday. “And that includes the professional relationship between our cosmonauts and our astronauts.” But other relations in space were fragmented after the Russia-Ukraine war. The European Government has announced that it has indefinitely suspended the ExoMars rover mission with partner Roscosmos, a Russian state-owned company, and OneWeb, a British space constellation, has been forced to cancel a satellite launch of a Russian fire. “It’s a little uncomfortable the rest of the space industry has been shaken by the war in Ukraine… and yet on the ISS it’s as if nothing had happened…[and] “Somehow, at some level, because they have so much money invested in it,” astronomer Jonathan McDowell told Al Jazeera.
