The cosmonaut Mark Vande Hei is scheduled to fly to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 30 along with his other teammates Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov. These people will return from space after 355 days aboard the Russian Soyuz capsule. This will be a new record for America.
It was feared that due to the ongoing tension between the US and Russia over Ukraine, 55-year-old Mark Vande Hei might also be left entangled outside. But in a recent statement to the media, NASA’s ISS program manager Joyal Montalbano said, “I can say with certainty that Mark is returning home on the Soyuz. We are in contact with our Russian colleagues. There is no problem with that.” No. All the three crew members are returning home.”
Over the weekend, Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Russia’s space agency, warned again that Western sanctions on Russia could crash the ISS. Due to which the operation of the spacecraft can stop which is necessary to keep it in orbit.
Then earlier this week the Russian news agency TASS said: “Russian space corporation Roscosmos has never given its peers the slightest chance to doubt its credibility” and Vande Hei will go home as planned.
Power and life support are provided by the US to the International Space Station. While propulsion and attitude control is done by Russia. The two have been dependent on each other since it was formed in the 1990s. America is constantly trying through Northrop Grumman and SpaceX ships to put the station in orbit, but so far it has not been successful in doing so. Therefore, the existence of the space station in orbit is not yet possible without the help of Russia.
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