NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, a 168-day-long astronaut living in space in 2017-18, will join two Russian cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz spacecraft April 9 for a flight back to NASA’s International Space Station and Russian space agency announced Tuesday.
While NASA funded the development of SpaceX and Boeing’s commercial crew capsules to end the group’s post-shuttle reliance on Russia for space transport, a continued launch aboard the Soyuz will ensure the U.S. on the lab even though an American spacecraft and crew are made to depart unplanned.
Similarly, Russian cosmonauts plan to launch on U.S. commercial crew ships to ensure a Russian presence in case of illness or some other emergency forces the Soyuz crew to go ahead of schedule- ama. Cosmonauts have not yet been named to fly a new U.S. spacecraft.
NASA
NASA managers have said that seats will not be bought and sold as they were before when an American spacecraft was not available and the agency has had to rely on Russia to reach the station. Instead, the two countries are expected to place each other in despised arrangements to ensure continuity of crew on board the laboratory.
A press release from NASA said that Vande Hei’s chair was set up under a contract with Axiom Space, by Mike Suffredini, a former space station program manager. In return, NASA will take a seat aboard the U.S. commercial crew ship in 2023 for a non-NASA astronaut to be announced later by Axiom.
The company already plans to launch four non-NASA astronauts on a fully commercial flight to the space station early next year.
Roscosmos said in a statement Tuesday that they agreed to put Vande Hei on the Soyuz MS-18 / 64S team “at the urgent request of the American side.”
“NASA expressed its ambitions just at the end of 2020, so the Russian side had to change the already agreed flight program,” the space agency said in translated references. “Roscosmos agrees with this decision, reaffirming its commitment to the agreements and the collective spirit of the International Space Station.”
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who is currently 146 days into a planned 185-day mission aboard the space station, used the last Soyuz seat NASA bought when it exploded Oct. 14 last year with cosmonauts. Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.
NASA paid $ 90.3 million for the Rubins capital, pushing NASA ‘s total payments to the Russian space agency to $ 4 billion for 71 Soyuz missions between 2006 and the end of 2020.
NASA
Vande Hei, who holds a master’s degree in applied physics from Stanford University, was first flown into space when he boarded the Soyuz MS-06 / 54S spacecraft on September 12, 2017, along with Alexander Misurkin and crew- NASA crew Joe Acaba. He spent 168 days in space and made four spacewalks with 26 hours and 42 minutes.
For his second flight, Vande Hei replaces cosmonaut Sergey Korsakov, joining Soyuz MS-18 / 64S commander Oleg Novitskiy and copilot Pyotr Dubrov aboard the Soyuz MS-18 / 64S spacecraft. A launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is scheduled for 3:42 am ET on April 9th.
They are expected to dock at the space station about three hours after takeoff, joining Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov aboard the exit, together. to four astronauts who arrived in November last year aboard the SpaceX Crew-1 Dragon capsule: Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese fly Soichi Noguchi.
Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov plan to return to Earth on April 17, shutting down a 185-day mission.
The four Crew-1 Dragon labels are expected to return to a shower at the Atlantic in late April, a week or so after another Crew Dragon carries four new crew members: Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese Label Akihiko Hoshide.
Vande Hei will remain on board the station with Novitskiy and Dubrov for at least six months, although plans for his return home have not yet been announced.