Russia-US Cooperation Still Occurs In Space, 1 Astronaut And 2 Cosmonauts Return To Earth On Soyuz

Astronaut Mark Vande Hei from the United States, will return to Earth in a Soyuz. (photo: twitter @NASA)

JAKARTA - A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts will return to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) next week.

Two of them, America's Mark Vande Hei and Russia's Pyotr Dubrov, have spent a total of 355 days at the orbiting observatory after blasting off into space on April 5 last year.

During a long-range mission, Vande Hei broke the record for the longest single space flight by an American astronaut, previously held at 340 days.

The couple, along with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, will return from space on Wednesday, March 30. Shkaplerov launches on the Soyuz MS-19 on October 5, 2021.

Vande Hei, Shkaplerov and Dubrov will take off from the Rassvet module, before their Soyuz spacecraft heads for a parachute-assisted landing in the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan.

Coverage of crew separations, releases, and landings will be shown live on NASA TV, the US space agency's website, and the NASA app at the following times:

1. Farewell and hatch closing - Tuesday, March 29, 23:30 ET (04:30 BST)
2. Undocking - Wednesday, March 30, 02:45 ET (6:45 BST)
3. Deorbit burn and landing - Wednesday, March 30, 06:15 ET (10:15 BST)

Vande Hei and Dubrov will complete a 355-day mission spanning 5,680 Earth orbits and over 150 million miles. This was Vande Hei's second space flight with a total of 523 days in space.

This was Dubrov's first flight, while for Shkaplerov, ending his fourth mission with 708 cumulative days spent in space.

Prior to coverage of the Soyuz departure, Shkaplerov will hand over command of the station to NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn with a change of command ceremony.

The event will be broadcast live on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the US space agency's website at 9:45 a.m. ET (13:45 BST) on Tuesday, March 29.

At the time of demolition, Expedition 67 will officially begin aboard the station, with new station Commander Marshburn, NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Kayla Barron, European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov.

After landing, the Soyuz MS-19 crew will split up, according to standard crew repatriation exercises. Vande Hei returns to his home in Houston, while the cosmonauts fly back to their training base in Star City, Russia.

The DailyMail reports that Artemyev, Matveev, and Korsakov were launched to the ISS last week, despite rising tensions between Moscow and Washington over the war in Ukraine.

Their Soyuz spacecraft began its more than three-hour journey to the orbiting outpost after launching from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at around 15:55 GMT on Friday, March 18.

However, the Russian space agency was later forced to reject claims that the three cosmonauts boarded the ISS wearing Ukrainian colors in a statement against the war.

On March 30, @Astro_Sabot is scheduled to return to Earth via the Soyuz spacecraft after his record-breaking stint aboard the @Space_Station. The undocking and landing will air live on NASA TV starting at 11:30pm ET (3:30 UTC), Tues, March 29: https://t.co/I5CJT0dOn1 pic.twitter.com/UCYU8trZ6I

— NASA (@NASA) March 25, 2022

Artemyev leads the trio and joins two spaceflight rookies, Matveev and Korsakov, on a science mission aboard the ISS that is planned to last six and a half months.

This continues more than two decades of concurrent Russian-US presence in the laboratory.

However, it comes amid growing animosity between the two former Cold War foes, with Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine weighing on cooperation between the two countries in space.

The ISS, launched in 1998, as a research platform orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000. The station is provisionally operated by a US-Russia-led partnership including Canada, Japan, and 11 European countries.

The ISS was born in part as a foreign policy initiative to improve US-Russian relations after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Cold War hostilities that fueled the space race.

But recent actions by the head of Russia's space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, have prompted some of the US space industry to rethink the NASA-Roscosmos partnership.

As part of US economic sanctions against Putin's government last month, US President Joe Biden ordered restrictions on Moscow's high-tech exports which he said were designed to "downgrade" Russia's aerospace industry, including its space program.

Rogozin immediately lashed out in a series of tweets suggesting US sanctions could 'destroy' the work of the ISS team and cause the space station itself to fall out of orbit.

A week later, he hit back by announcing Russia would stop supplying or repairing Russian-made rocket engines used by two of NASA's suppliers. He suggested that American astronauts should be able to use a 'broom' to get into orbit.

At about the same time, Moscow said it had halted joint ISS research with Germany and forced the cancellation of the British satellite launch from Baikonur within 11 hours.

The head of Roscosmos also said last month that Russia was suspending its cooperation with European launch operations at the European Spaceport in French Guiana.

He even got into a Twitter spat with NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. Rogozin called Kelly a 'stupid' and threatened to leave the ISS.