STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USE WITH PERMISSION
NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two cosmonauts took off from Kazakhstan on Friday and crashed into the International Space Station after a two-lane chase, the first step in a record crew that required two launches and two landings with four different spacecraft in just three weeks.
The launch took place three days before the 60th anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight on April 12, 1961 to become the first man in space. More than 570 men and women have since embarked on the journey, which has fueled competition and culminated in cooperation between Russia and the United States on the International Space Station.
“When we started, we competed with each other and that was one of the reasons why we were so successful at the beginning of human spaceflight,” Vande Hei said at a news conference before the launch. ‘And over time, we realized that by working together even more, we could achieve even more. It continues to this day, and I hope it will continue in the future. ”
The replacement of the station’s current crew, Vande Hei, commander Oleg Novitskiy and flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov, crashed the launch of the Baikonur food modem aboard the Soyuz MS-18 / 64S spacecraft at 15:42 Friday (12 : 42 local) time).
The Soyuz 2.1a rocket climbed through a clear blue sky, and the crew’s ship pushed the space smoothly, and after a quick two-orbit, the spacecraft landed at the laboratory’s Earth-Oriented Race Fat Module at 7:05 p.m. indedaal.
The new crew on board was Soyuz MS-17 / 63S commander Sergey Ryzhikov and his two crew members, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Kate Rubins, along with SpaceX Crew-1 Dragon astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and the Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
“Father, when are you coming back?” Asked the young daughter of Novitskiy during a traditional video conference with family members on earth.
The extended crew of ten members will enjoy a week together before Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins climb out and return to Earth aboard their own Soyuz, and end up on the steppes of Kazakhstan on April 17 at 12:56 p.m. n 185- day shipment.
Five days later, at 22:11 on April 22, NASA and SpaceX plan to send a Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Crew-2 Commander Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, the Japanese Akihiko Hoshide, to transport. and Thomas Pesquet of the ESA to the station, which briefly increased the laboratory’s crew to 11.
After the SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts – Hopkins, Glover, Walker and Noguchi – get to know their replacement with station systems, they will be on their way home and splashing in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida on April 28. day flight, the first operational mission by a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
And with that, the crew of the space station exchange will be complete. The Crew-2 astronauts and crew of the Soyuz MS-18 / 64S are expected to be replaced at the end of September and mid-October respectively.
But Vande Hei, a last-minute addition to the latest Soyuz crew, does not know when he will be able to drive home. While his flight would officially last six months, he would eventually be able to live a full year aboard the space station.
This is because NASA executives want to guarantee a continuous US presence on board the laboratory to ensure that a properly trained NASA astronaut is on board to operate US systems at all times, even if the launch is interrupted or something is forced. to partially evacuate.
“The plan is that I will be on board for six months,” Vande Hei from Moscow said in an interview with CBS News before the launch. ‘Of course it’s a very dynamic situation, so we try to make sure we’m ready for anything. I definitely feel emotionally prepared to stay on the track longer than the six months planned. ”
He added: “There are a variety of things that could affect when I return (but) I am also very confident that no matter what happens, we will ensure that we have a constant US presence in the space station.”
NASA wants to ensure the continued launch of US astronauts aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft and Russian cosmonauts aboard US ferry ships, although the US space agency has funded the development of commercial crews to build its sole reliance on Russia for transportation to and from the station. end.
Russian astronauts have not been trained to operate NASA’s solar system, computers, stabilizing gyroscopes and other systems. Similarly, American astronauts are equally unprepared to operate Russian propulsion, dock, and other mission-critical systems.
If a medical emergency or other crisis were to force a Russian or NASA crew to leave unplanned, the crew members left behind would be trained to operate American or Russian systems – but not both – the station might not be on can not maintain their own.
NASA also wants to protect against the possibility of an accident or a major technical problem that could interrupt or suspend the crew’s rotational flight.
There are no Soyuz seats available in the short term – Rubins used NASA’s last seat purchased directly – and in any case NASA is no longer authorized to buy rides on Russian spacecraft. The Vande Hei seat was acquired by Axiom Space in Houston in exchange for a future flight by a commercial astronaut on a NASA-sponsored ferry.
NASA executives hope to work out an agreement with the Russian space agency to ensure crew continuity aboard the station by launching at least one NASA astronaut aboard each Soyuz flight and one cosmonaut aboard each U.S. commercial crew mission.
Meanwhile, Vande Hei is willing to stay in a lane, no matter how long it takes before a seat opens.
“The attitude we take is that every step of this (mission) means I get just as close to home, whether it’s six months or longer,” he said. “My wife really has a fantastic attitude. I have deployed several times (but) for my family, it would be a record recorder. ”