A US astronaut will return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz ship

Washington, 17 Mar The flight back to Earth of the American astronaut Mark Vande Hei from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from Russia, along with two Russian cosmonauts, is continuing as scheduled, NASA confirmed Thursday to Efe. In a statement, the US space agency said that “on March 30, the Soyuz spacecraft will return, as scheduled, taking NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov back to Earth.” The note added that Vande Hei will hold “the American record” of being the person who has done the longest space flight, for 355 days. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on 24 February, has raised doubts about the future of space missions involving Russia, a country against which the US and its allies have imposed harsh sanctions and retaliatory measures. This Thursday, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the suspension of the launch of the Exomars mission, which aims to search for biological or geological evidence of life on Mars, due to the impossibility of cooperating with the Russian agency Roscosmos, with which it was collaborating on this project. ESA, which claimed to align itself “completely” with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its member states after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, said it will evaluate the options available to implement the mission, for which the rover (exploration vehicle) was to be launched in September. The European agency recalled on Thursday that Roscosmos' decision to withdraw its personnel from the European space center, in French Guiana, has interrupted all missions that were going to take off with a Russian Soyuz rocket. Five days ago, Roscosmos appealed to its ISS partners demanding an end to sanctions against Russia, as they jeopardize this project. The ISS is supported by ESA, Roscosmos, the US Space Agency (NASA), Japan's JAXA and Canada's CSA. CHIEF ssa/er/jrh