CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hey has been in space for nearly a year, but he faces his biggest challenge ever: returning to Earth in a Russian capsule at the height of escalating tensions between the countries. .
NASA insists that Vande Hey’s plans to return home at the end of the month remain unchanged, even as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to launch cancellations, contract ruptures and an escalating war of words from the hardline leader of the Russian Space Agency. Many fear that Dmitry Rogozin is jeopardizing decades of peaceful partnership beyond the planet, especially on the International Space Station.
Vande Hey, who on Tuesday will break the U.S. solo space flight record of 340 days, is due to travel with two Russians aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to land in Kazakhstan on March 30. By then, the astronaut will have spent 355 days in space, setting a new US record. The world record of 438 days of continuous stay in space belongs to Russia.
Retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, America’s record holder through Tuesday, is among those sparring with Rogozin, a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin. Enraged by what is happening in Ukraine, Kelly returned his Russian medal for space exploration to the Russian embassy in Washington.
Despite the deadly conflict here, Kelly believes the two sides “can stick together” in space.
“We need an example that two countries that historically were not in the most friendly relations can still work peacefully somewhere. And it’s somewhere in the International Space Station. That’s why we need to fight to keep it,” Kelly told The Associated Press.
NASA wants the space station operational until 2030, as do the European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies, while the Russians have not committed beyond the original end date of 2024 or so.
The US and Russia are the main operators of the orbital outpost, which has been continuously occupied by it for 21 years. Until SpaceX began launching astronauts in 2020, Americans regularly flew Russian Soyuz capsules for tens of millions of dollars a seat. The US and Russian space agencies are still working on a long-term barter system in which a Russian will launch on a SpaceX capsule starting this fall and an American will fly on a Soyuz. This will help ensure the continued presence of US and Russian stations.
Vande Hei, 55, a retired army colonel, arrived at the space station last April, launching a Soyuz from Kazakhstan, along with Petr Dubrov and another Russian. He and Dubrov stayed twice as long as usual to accommodate a Russian film crew that arrived in October.
As the situation 260 miles (420 km) below escalated last month, Vande Hey admitted he avoided talking about Ukraine with Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov, their Russian commander. Three more Russians will take their place on Friday from Kazakhstan.
“We didn’t talk about it too much. I’m not sure we really want to go there,” Vande Hey said in a TV interview in mid-February.
According to NASA, the work of the space station continues as always – in orbit and on Earth.
“It will be a sad day for international operations if we cannot continue to work peacefully in space,” said NASA chief of manned spaceflight Kathy Lueders, who noted that it would be “very difficult” to go it alone.
To mark Tuesday’s big milestone, NASA took to Twitter to collect questions for video responses, with some asking if Vande Hey could switch to the American trip home. SpaceX is taking three wealthy businessmen and their former astronaut to the space station in late March for a brief visit. Then in mid-April, SpaceX will fly four astronauts to NASA and then bring back four that have been on board since November.
NASA and SpaceX officials refuse to speculate about whether a seat could be made available. They say that in Kazakhstan, as usual, there will be a NASA plane and a small team to bring Vande Hey home to Houston.
Former NASA astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, whose father was born in Ukraine, admits the situation is difficult.
“We are imposing sanctions against Russia. Companies refuse to do business in Russia. But at the same time, the US government, the space agency, does business with the Russians,” she said. “You can’t press a button and separate the two” sides of the space station.
In addition to threatening to leave the space station and drop it on the US, Europe or elsewhere, Rogozin covered other countries’ flags on a Soyuz rocket waiting to launch with internet satellites earlier this month. The launch was canceled after the customer, London-based OneWeb, dropped its demands not to use the satellites for military purposes and the British government withdrew its financial support.
The European Space Agency is also experiencing difficulties. After missing the deadline for launching its rover in 2020 – a joint European-Russian effort – the project was due to launch in September from Kazakhstan. Now that has likely been delayed until 2024, the next opportunity for Earth and Mars to align properly. And Russia withdrew its personnel from the French cosmodrome in South America, suspending Soyuz launches of European satellites.
This is all in addition to the Russian government’s anti-satellite missile test in November, which added countless debris to the debris already surrounding Earth and put four Americans, two Russians and one German on the space station on alert for days.
Jeffrey Manber, now of the private company Voyager Space, helped bridge the gap between the US and Russia as early as the mid-1990s when the first part of the space station was launched in 1998. He considers the outpost “one of the last obstacles to cooperation.” between the two countries. But, he added, “there will be no turning back if the partnership is terminated, and the result is a premature termination of the ISS program.”
Regardless of how things stand on the space station, John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, expects this to end large-scale space cooperation between Russia and the West.
“Russia is already moving towards China and the current situation is likely to accelerate this move,” he said.
While Vande Hey remains silent on Twitter, Kelly and others are hard at work resenting Rogozin’s threats.
Elon Musk’s privately owned SpaceX hit Rogozin after he said Russia would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies – Northrop Grumman and United Launch Alliance – adding that they could use brooms to get into orbit.
During last week’s launch, a SpaceX official responded, “It’s time to let America’s broom fly and hear the sounds of freedom.”
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