By John Ikani
After a record-breaking 355 days spent in space, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is back on Earth.
In a Russian Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, Vande Hei and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov undocked from the International Space Station at 3.21 a.m. ET Wednesday.
They touched down after a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan at 7:28 a.m. ET.
Vande Hei spent 355 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), breaking the previous record by 15 days.
In other words, Vande Hei has now broken the record for the longest single spaceflight by an American astronaut, which previously was set by Kelly at 340 days.
In that time he orbited the Earth 5,680 times, covering a distance of more than 150 million miles.
The ISS astronauts and cosmonauts said they did not discuss the issues and continued to operate as usual while working on the orbiting laboratory.
Despite escalating tensions between the US and Russia over Vladimir Putin’s war with 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.
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vande Hei said he was avoiding the subject with his two Russian crewmates. Despite getting along “fantastically … I’m not sure we really want to go there,“ he said.
It was the first taste of gravity for Vande Hei and Dubrov since their Soyuz launch on 9 April 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 astronauts as “my space brothers and space sister.”
“People have problem on Earth. On orbit … we are one crew,” Shkaplerov said in a live Nasa TV broadcast Tuesday. The space station is a symbol of “friendship and cooperation and … future of exploration of space.”
“Mark’s mission is not only record-breaking, but also paving the way for future human explorers on the Moon, Mars, and beyond,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
“Our astronauts make incredible sacrifices in the name of science, exploration, and cutting-edge technology development, not least among them time away from loved ones. Nasa and the nation are proud to welcome Mark home and grateful for his incredible contributions throughout his year-long stay on the International Space Station.”
