An American historian and two Russian sailors also returned from the International Space Station, showing that communication could continue in space as the neck rises above Earth. .
NASA’s Mark Vande Hey, who now spends 355 days more time on a single space voyage than any other U.S. astronaut in history, landed with his fellow Expedition 66 , cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos, the Russian air force. The three crashed Wednesday (March 30) at 7:28 am EDT (1128 GMT or 5:28 pm local) aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, en route to the steppe of eastern Kazakhstan south of the city of Dzhezkazgan. They landed just four hours after leaving the International Space Station.
“I’ve had a job inside, 24/7, almost a year, so I’ve been waiting outside, it doesn’t matter what the weather is like,” Vande Hei said before leaving the central site. After landing, he and two of his colleagues were joined by Roscosmos and NASA conservation teams, who helped them out of the Soyuz to the seats, where they spent a short stay outside, starting to adjust for gravity and getting an initial medical diagnosis.
video: Astronaut Mark Vande Hey in his year near the sky
Select: Updates from the International Space Station
For Dubrov, which means the end of a 355 -day mission, starting with Vande Hei in April 2021. Shkaplerov spent 175 days on the field, where he served as a leader. of the company Expedition 66.
“We worked hard, as a team, and we had no problems,” Shkaplerov said during a brief change of command line -up on Tuesday.
Although their countries were linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Shkaplerov called his American and European colleagues his “flying brothers and sisters.”
“People are a problem on Earth. In orbit, we’re the same – no, we’re not the same, we’re one army – and I think the ISS [International Space Station] it’s a sign of connection and togetherness and a sign of looking to the future, “he said.
Shkaplerov, Dubrov and Vande Hei left space to begin their home journey at 3:21 am EDT (0721 GMT) on Wednesday, launching Soyuz MS-19 from the Rassvet mini research module. Their departure marked the start of Expedition 67 on the field with Captain Tom Marshburn and flight engineers Raja Chari and Kayla Barron, NASA astronauts, Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency (ESA). ) and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov continuing to staff the orbiting chamber.
Select: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on satellite imagery
While Dubrov and Vande Hei had been in orbit for a long time, they were members of three expeditions (64, 65 and 66). They shared the space with 22 colleagues, with brief visits by two Japanese tourists and a Russian film group, the latter of whom was there to shoot photos for the released film “The Challenge ”(Shkaplerov will be on the field with the actor and director in October.)
Dubrov also led four spacewalks, including one with Shkaplerov, to prepare for the arrival and later two new Russian modules, the “Science” multi-purpose laboratory and the “Prichal” node.
Vande Hei has helped lead hundreds of scientific research and technology demonstrations, recording a record by collecting 26 Chilean papers to feed the largest number of astronauts from a plant in the United States. grow in the air.
Vande Hei has lived longer than in the history of 340 days for the longest time in space by an American as scheduled by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly in March 2016. I completing his second mission, Vande Hei spent 523 days in the air.
Dubrov’s 355 -day mission is fourth (listed with Vande Hei) on the world list for longest flight. Soviet -era cosmonauts Musa Manarov, Vladimir Titov and Valery Polyakov spent long periods of time in orbit, with Polyakov flying the longest mission in history in 437 days, 17 hours and a half. with 58 minutes.
Shkaplerov completed his four -year mission with 708 cumulative days spent in the air. It is ranked seventh on the Earth’s list for most of its time spent outside of Earth.
Shkaplerov and the Soyuz MS-19 traveled a total of 74.7 million miles (120 million km) to complete 2,816 Earth orbits. Vande Hei and Dubrov covered 5,680 orbits of Earth while traveling more than 150 million miles (240 million km).
Now on the ground, Shkaplerov and Dubrov will return to Star City, outside Moscow, while Vande Hei will fly back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
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