This week, information shops reported that the pinnacle of Russia’s Space Agency threatened to depart American astronaut Mark Vande Hei — the record-holder for the longest spaceflight — aboard the International Space Station (ISS) quite than permitting him to return to Earth on a Russian spacecraft. It seems that the menace is not true, Ars Technica reported.
Vande Hei started his mission on April 9, 2021, and is scheduled to return to Earth on March 30, 2022, that means he may have spent 355 consecutive days in Earth orbit, in accordance with NASA. The plan is for Vande Hei to land in Kazakhstan together with two Russian cosmonauts, Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov and Commander Anton Shkaplerov, aboard the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship, a Russian vessel.
However, after President Joe Biden instituted new sanctions in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a number of information shops reported that Dmitry Rogozin, the pinnacle of Russia’s Space Agency, threatened to desert Vande Hei on the ISS. This declare stems from a video posted Feb. 26, which was shared by a Kremlin-aligned publication, RIA Novosti, in accordance with Ars Technica.
Roscosmos TV, the tv station of the Russian Federal Space Agency, supplied footage for the video however famous that the video was a “joke,” Ars Technica reported. The similar video additionally jokingly means that Russia would possibly go as far as to detach its portion of the ISS from the American facet of the house station, along with stranding Vande Hei.
Related: Russian invasion of Ukraine: Live updates
On Friday (March 11), a NASA spokesperson assured The StarTribune that “On March 30, a Soyuz spacecraft will return as scheduled carrying NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov back to Earth.”
And even when Rogozin’s menace to depart Vande Hei on the station was respectable — which it is not — American astronauts Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Thomas Marshburn, in addition to German astronaut Matthias Maurer are all on the ISS, too, Ars Technica reported. So in any case, Vande Hei would be capable to catch one other journey again to Earth.
Originally printed on Live Science.