After record-breaking trip, NASA astronaut returns to Earth

NASA astronaut, Russian cosmonauts coming back to Earth

Updated: Mar 29, 2022 / 02:31 PM CDT

FILE – In this Aug. 17, 2021 photo made available by NASA, astronaut and Expedition 65 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei inspects a spacesuit in preparation for a spacewalk at the International Space Station. (NASA via AP, File)

(NewsNation) — After nearly one year in space on a record-breaking flight, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is looking forward to having a cup of coffee with his wife, he said in a video posted to Twitter Tuesday.

Vande Hei, and two Roscosmos cosmonauts, Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, are scheduled to return to Earth on Wednesday. When they land in Kazakhstan, it will end a 355-day mission aboard the International Space Station.

At 11:30 p.m. ET, the crew will make their farewells and execute their hatch closure. At 2:45 a.m., they undock before deorbiting and landing at 6:15 a.m. ET.

NASA, according to a news release, will stream the crew’s landing on NASA TV, the agency’s website and NASA app.

Vande Hei and Dubrov launched on Soyuz MS-18 in April 2021, and Shkaplerov launched on Soyuz MS-19 Oct. 5, 2021.

During the trip, Vande Hei broke the record for the longest single spaceflight by an American astronaut, which had previously been 340 days. On a video posted to the International Space Station’s Twitter account, Vande Hei worked on research ranging from studies on muscle loss to fire safety to kidney health.

Vande Hei, who returns to Houston, and Shkaplerov and Dubrov, who are bound for Star City, Russia, return from space in the midst of the Russia-Ukraine War, which has resulted in canceled spacecraft launches and broken contracts and an escalating war of words by Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian Space Agency’s hard-line leader.

When it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, Vande Hei told a TV interviewer in mid-February that he and the Roscosmos cosmonauts haven’t talked much about it.

“I’m not sure we really want to go there,” he said.

While NASA wants to keep the space station running until 2030, Russians have not committed beyond its original end date of 2024.

Despite geopolitical tensions, NASA has said the crew’s homecoming plans remain unchanged. According to NASA, space station operations continue as always.

“It would be a sad day for our international operations if we can’t continue to peacefully operate in space, and as a team, we’re doing that,” said NASA’s human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders.