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Anton Schkaplerow (l) and PjotrDubrow (r) fly back to Earth along with Mark Vande Hei (back) (file image).
Source: Kayla Barron/NASA/dpa
There was a lot of speculation about this flight: two Russians and an American were flying back to Earth from the ISS in a Russian spacecraft, in the midst of the war in Ukraine.
Amid rising tensions between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine, a US astronaut and two cosmonauts returned to Earth together from the International Space Station aboard a Russian space capsule.
American Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov landed in the hot sun in central Kazakhstan on Wednesday, live footage from the US space agency NASA showed.
Officials from the US space agency Nasa and the Russian space agency Roscosmos flew helicopters to the landing site and took the three men out of the space capsule, which had been overturned on its side by strong winds after landing. The astronauts were given sunglasses, hats, hot lemon tea and masks, and were wrapped in black blankets with the inscription “Roskosmos”.
“Tea tastes really good, it’s much tastier when you’re in your home country,” Schkaplerov said. The approximately four-hour flight with the Russian ISS Soyuz space capsule went completely according to plan and it’s “great” to be back on Earth.
Shkaplerov’s colleagues Vande Hei and Dubrow also smiled and waved at the cameras upon arrival, before disappearing into an inflatable tent to change and undergo a medical.
They would later be flown back to Moscow and Houston, first by helicopter and then by plane. “Welcome back, Mark,” it read in large letters in Russian and English on the Roscosmos control center’s scoreboard.
Both sides had previously vehemently denied speculation that Vande Hei would not be able to fly back to Earth in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft due to the tensions. Schkaplerov handed over command of the ISS to American astronaut Thomas Marshburn before departure. Even if people on Earth had “problems”, the ISS would remain a “symbol of cooperation”, he said.
Vande Hei, 55, arrived at the ISS on April 9, 2021 along with Dubrow. He has been in space for 355 days, surpassing Scott Kelly, who previously held the record for the longest stay by an American in space for 341 consecutive days. Vande Hei has circumnavigated the Earth about 5,680 times. “Mark’s mission not only broke a record, it also paved the way for future human explorers on the Moon, Mars and beyond,” said NASA CEO Bill Nelson.
In addition to Marshburn, US astronauts Raja Chari and Kayla Barron, German astronaut Matthias Maurer and three cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov remained on the ISS.