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All-Russian cosmonaut crew launches to International Space Station
It is the primary spaceflight for Matveev and Korsakov, and the trio will spend the following six and a half months aboard the house station.
The cosmonauts are anticipated to dock with the house station at 3:05 p.m. ET and the hatch will open at 5:30 p.m. ET, when they are going to be welcomed aboard the ISS by two Russian cosmonauts, 4 NASA astronauts and one European House Company astronaut.
It will convey the station’s crew depend to 10.
Usually, Russian Soyuz launches embrace two cosmonauts and at the least one NASA astronaut or one other worldwide accomplice because of a crew swap settlement between Russian house company Roscosmos and different businesses.
It isn’t the primary time an all-Russian mission has occurred — a Russian crew flew to the station in October to movie the primary film in house.
Though this cosmonaut launch happens at a time when geopolitical tensions are mounting, the absence of different nations’ involvement is coincidental and primarily based on a previous settlement between NASA and Roscosmos to a delayed crew swap for future missions in 2022.
“We nonetheless plan to work the crew swap,” stated Joel Montalbano, the supervisor of NASA’s Worldwide House Station program, throughout a press convention Monday. “And so we nonetheless have scheduled coaching for Rocosmos to return to Houston, Hawthorne and our workforce to go over to Star Metropolis and practice for the Soyuz.
“So far as interactions with the White Home — they’re conscious that we’re persevering with these operations. We get questions infrequently, and we answered them, however as we speak we’re persevering with to work these agreements.”
Montalbano didn’t reply to a query about extending the ISS partnership with Russia to 2030.
When requested whether or not the present tensions on Earth have translated to the crew aboard the house station, Montalbano stated, “Once you’re in house, there isn’t any borders. You do not see you do not see nation strains or state strains.”
“The groups proceed to work collectively. Are they conscious of what is going on on Earth? Completely. Astronauts and cosmonauts are a number of the {most professional} teams you will ever see. They proceed to function properly, and there is actually no pressure with the workforce. That is what they have been educated to do they usually’re up there doing that job.”
Returning to Earth
On March 30, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is about to return to Earth alongside Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.
Vande Hei — who launched to the ISS in April 2021 — surpassed NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s file of 340 days in house on March 15, and when he lands in Kazakhstan, he can have set a brand new file for the period of time a human has spent in house: 355 days.
The house company sought to reaffirm Monday that it is nonetheless working carefully with Russian house company Rocosmos on the Worldwide House Station, regardless of mounting geopolitical tensions.
Joint operations between NASA and Roscosmos on the Russian amenities at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, “proceed to go properly,” based on Montalbano. “I can let you know for positive Mark [Vande Hei] is coming residence” on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Montalbano stated Monday. “We’re in communication with our Russian colleagues, there isn’t any fuzz on that.”
NASA officers didn’t say there can be any vital modifications to plans to get Vande Hei again to the USA after he lands. He’ll journey residence through a Gulfstream jet, as different US astronauts have earlier than him.
For practically a decade, Russia’s Soyuz autos had been the one technique of getting astronauts to and from the house station. However that reliance ended after SpaceX debuted its Crew Dragon capsule in 2020, and the US regained human spaceflight capabilities.
When Montalbano was requested by CNN’s Kristin Fisher about whether or not NASA has contingency plans in place if the US-Russia relationship additional deteriorates, he stated: “The Worldwide House Station, I am going to let you know, it has been the flagship mannequin for worldwide cooperation. We talked earlier (about) the interdependency that now we have between the US and the Russian section. That’s the reason we’re in a position to function and the way we’re working…At the moment there isn’t any indication from our Russian companions that they need to do something totally different. So we’re planning to proceed operations as we’re as we speak.”