A Soyuz capsule depicted in December 2021 Image caption: A Soyuz capsule depicted in December 2021 An astronaut from the US and two cosmonauts from Russia will return to Earth together despite growing tensions between the two countries over Ukraine. A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying Nasa astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov is expected to disengage from the International Space Station (ISS) at 0645 GMT and land in Kazakhstan four hours later. The joint trip home comes amid growing uncertainty about the fate of US-Russia space cooperation. On February 25 – the day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of the Russian space agency, accused the United States of trying to “destroy” cooperation with the ISS. “If you block cooperation with us, then who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled descent from orbit and then fall to the territory of the United States or Europe?” he said. Nasa, however, said it would continue to work with all of its international partners – including Russia – and that export sanctions would continue to allow it to work with Russia.
