NASA’s plans to send American astronaut Mark Vande Hei back to Earth by riding a Russian capsule remains unchanged even as tensions between the United States and Russia grow.
Vande Hei, who has spent almost a year in space, is on his way to breaking the U.S. single spaceflight record of 340 days on Tuesday and is scheduled to return home along with two Russians on the Soyuz capsule on March 30, according to The Guardian.
NASA has said that Vande Hei’s plans to touch down in Kazakhstan have not changed, according to the Associated Press, even though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three weeks ago has caused space programs to cancel launches and to break contracts.
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In early March, OneWeb, a satellite internet company headquartered in London and partially owned by the British government, cancelled a satellite launch that required the use of a Russian rocket, according to The New York Times.
In addition, the company suspended future launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan which is controlled by the Russian Aerospace Forces and Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos.
Concerns over Russia’s willingness to help return Vande Hei to Earth came up after President Biden announced a series of economic sanctions on Moscow in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions would “degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program,” Biden said during a White House news conference in late February, according to CBS News.
In response, Moscow decided to stop delivering all rocket engines to the United States, and Roscosmos Director-General Dimitry Rogozin, a long-time supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, warned that U.S. sanctions could have “dire” consequences for the International Space Station program.
Shortly afterwards, NASA officials assured reporters it would continue to work with all of its international partners including Russia for the time being.
“NASA continues working with all our international partners, including the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station,” a NASA spokesperson Joshua Finch told Space.com.
“The new export control measures will continue to allow U.S.-Russia civil space cooperation. No changes are planned to the agency’s support for ongoing in orbit and ground station operations.”
The International Space Station has been permanently occupied for more than 20 years with its main operators being the United States and Russia. And until Elon Musks’ SpaceX began launching astronauts into space two years ago, American astronauts routinely returned back to Earth on the Soyuz capsules, according to ABC News.
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