NASA astronaut joins Russian Soyuz crew for April flight to space station – Spaceflight Now

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS AND USED WITH PERMISSION

NASA Astronaut Mark Vande Hei, veteran of a 168-day stay in space in 2017-18, will join two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on April 9 for a return flight to the Station international space as part of an agreement negotiated through Axiom Space, based in Houston. , NASA and the Russian space agency announced Tuesday.

While NASA has funded the development of SpaceX and Boeing commercial crew capsules to end the agency’s post-shuttle dependence on Russia for space transportation, continued launches aboard the Soyuz will ensure a U.S. presence. on the lab even though an American spacecraft and crew are forced to make an unscheduled departure.

Likewise, Russian cosmonauts eventually plan to launch on American commercial crew ships to ensure a Russian presence in the event of illness or other emergency forces, a Soyuz crew will leave sooner than expected. No cosmonaut has yet been named to fly the new American spacecraft.

NASA officials said the seats would not be bought or sold as they were in the past, when no US spacecraft were available and the agency was forced to rely on Russia to reach the station. Instead, the two countries would have to come to terms with barter agreements to ensure the continuity of the crew aboard the lab.

A NASA press release said Vande Hei’s headquarters was organized under a contract with Axiom Space, headed by former space station program director Mike Suffredini. In return, NASA will provide a seat aboard a U.S. commercial crew ship in 2023 for a non-NASA astronaut to be named later by Axiom.

The company is already planning to launch four non-NASA astronauts on a fully commercial flight to the space station early next year.

In a statement posted on his webpage on Tuesday, Roscosmos said he had agreed to place Vande Hei in the crew of the Soyuz MS-18 / 64S “at the urgent request of the US side”.

“NASA did not express its wishes until the end of 2020, so the Russian side had to change the already agreed flight schedule,” the space agency said in translated remarks. “Roscosmos accepts this decision, reaffirming its commitment to joint agreements and the spirit of joint use of the International Space Station.”

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, currently 146 days on a planned 185-day mission aboard the space station, used the last Soyuz seat purchased by NASA when she took off on October 14 with cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.

NASA paid $ 90.3 million for the Rubins headquarters, bringing total NASA payments to the Russian space agency to $ 4 billion for 71 Soyuz trips between 2006 and the end of 2020.

Vande Hei, who holds a master’s degree in applied physics from Stanford University, first flew into space when he launched aboard the Soyuz MS-06 / 54S spacecraft on September 12, 2017 , with Alexander Misurkin and his NASA teammate Joe Acaba. He spent 168 days in space and completed four spacewalks totaling 26 hours and 42 minutes.

For his second flight, Vande Hei will replace cosmonaut Sergey Korsakov, joining Soyuz MS-18 / 64S commander Oleg Novitskiy and co-pilot Pyotr Dubrovnik aboard the Soyuz MS-18 / 64S spacecraft. The Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is scheduled to launch at 3:42 a.m. EDT on April 9.

They are expected to dock at the space station about three hours after takeoff, joining Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov aboard the outpost, as well as four astronauts who arrived last November aboard the SpaceX Crew-1 Dragon capsule: Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese aviator Soichi Noguchi.

Rubins, Ryzhikov, and Kud-Sverchkov plan to return to Earth on April 17, closing a 185-day mission.

The four Crew-1 Dragon pilots are expected to return to a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean at the end of April, about a week after the arrival of another Crew Dragon carrying four new crew members: Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese aviator Akihiko Hoshide.

Vande Hei will remain aboard the station with Novitskiy and Dubrovnik for at least six months, although plans for his return home have yet to be announced.