Crew makes space for cooperation in ISS exit

ALMATY－A NASA astronaut caught a Russian ride back to Earth on Wednesday after a US record of 355 days on the International Space Station, or ISS, returning with two Russian cosmonauts.

Mark Vande Hei landed in a Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan alongside the Russian Space Agency's Pyotr Dubrov, who also spent the past year in space, and Anton Shkaplerov.

The wind blew the capsule onto its side following a touchdown, and the trio emerged into the late afternoon sun one by one.

Vande Hei, the last one out, grinned and waved as he was carried to a reclining chair out in the open Kazakh steppes.

"Beautiful out here," said Vande Hei, putting on a face mask and ball cap.

Despite escalating tensions between the US and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, Vande Hei's return followed customary procedures. A small NASA team of doctors and other staff was on hand for the touchdown and planned to return immediately to Houston with the 55-year-old astronaut.

It was the first taste of gravity for Vande Hei and Dubrov since their Soyuz launch on April 9 last year. Shkaplerov joined them at the orbiting lab in October, escorting a Russian film crew up for a brief stay. To accommodate that visit, Vande Hei and Dubrov doubled the length of their stay.

Before departing the space station, Shkaplerov embraced his fellow crew members as "my space brothers and space sister".

"People have (a) problem on Earth. On orbit … we are one crew," Shkaplerov said in a live NASA TV broadcast on Tuesday. The space station is a symbol of "friendship and cooperation and… future of exploration of space".

The tensions have bubbled over in other areas of space with the suspension of European satellite launches on Russian rockets and the Europe-Russia Mars rover stuck on Earth for another two years.

Vande Hei surpassed NASA's previous record for the longest single spaceflight by 15 days. Dubrov moved into Russia's top five, well short of the 437-day, 17-hour marathon by a cosmonaut-physician aboard the 1990s Mir space station that remains the world record.

To Mars and beyond

"Mark's mission is not only record-breaking, but also paving the way for future human explorers on the moon, Mars, and beyond," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

"Broken records mean we're making progress," said NASA's previous space endurance champ, retired astronaut Scott Kelly, whose 340-day mission ended in 2016.

Remaining on the space station are three Russians who arrived two weeks ago and three US astronauts and one German.

Their replacements are due in three weeks via SpaceX. Next week, SpaceX will fly three rich businessmen and their ex-astronaut escort to the station for a weeklong visit arranged by the privately run Axiom Space.

Elon Musk's SpaceX began transporting NASA astronauts to the station in 2020, nine years after the shuttle program ended. During that gap, Russia offered the lone taxi service, with NASA shelling out tens of millions of dollars per Soyuz seat. Vande Hei's ride was part of a barter exchange with Houston-based Axiom.

Agencies - Xinhua