Mark Vande Hei, who broke the report for the longest single spaceflight by an American astronaut, has safely made it again to Earth. Vande Hei made his approach to the International Space Station on April ninth final yr and spent 355 days in orbit, eclipsing Scott Kelly’s report of 340 steady days spent exterior our planet’s environment. This concludes Vande Hei’s second spaceflight, bringing his whole variety of days spent in area to 523. 

The American astronaut made the journey again to Earth with Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov aboard the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft. There had been fears that Roscosmos would depart Vande Hei stranded in area after the US imposed sanctions in opposition to Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. NASA would’ve needed to depend on non-public firms, comparable to SpaceX, to move him again. Russian area company Roscosmos issued an announcement assuring everybody that it’s going to ferry Vande Hei again residence, although, proclaiming that the company “has never given reason to doubt its reliability as a partner.” 

The three passengers closed the hatch to their Soyuz spacecraft at 11:30PM EDT on March twenty ninth. They undocked at 2:45AM on March thirtieth and touched down at 7:28AM (5:28AM native time) in Kazakhstan. While he was aboard the ISS, Vande Hei contributed to dozens of research carried out on the station, together with six investigations by NASA’s Human Research Program. His contributions will assist the company and business area firms put together higher for long-duration spaceflights to locations farther than the ISS sooner or later.