CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – NASA could soon pay for another one-year mission thanks to a foreign Russian film contract.
Astronaut Mark Vande Hei only learned last week that he will be sent to the International Space Station on April 9 on a Russian rocket. The former resident of the station suspected that this could happen and just fell into it.
Vande Hei said at a news conference of the cosmonaut headquarters in Star City that he might have to cede his return Soyuz seat in the fall to a Russian space tourist interested in taking up there. If that happens, he and possibly one of his two Russian crew members will have to wait for the next Soyuz ride home – most likely in the spring of 2022.
“Honestly, it’s just an opportunity for me to have a new life experience,” he told reporters. ‘I’ve never been in space for more than about six months, so if someone tells me I should stay in space for a year, I’ll find out how it feels. I’m really enthusiastic about it. ”
The film is planned by the Russian Channel One and a TV movie studio. Preliminarily titled “Vyzov”, a challenge in English, it is intended to highlight Russian space activities and glorify the cosmonaut profession, according to a news release.
Five years have passed since retired astronaut Scott Kelly completed a 340-day space station mission, a U.S. record. Astronaut Christina Koch came to it a year ago.
NASA is eager for more extra-long missions to study the adaptation of the human body to weightlessness, especially since it is looking forward to Mars expeditions of at least a few years. Space station missions usually take six months.
Vande Hei was added to the next Soyuz crew – a Rest bumped – to keep an American presence on the space station, should SpaceX’s next astronaut flight experience a major delay. SpaceX is not aiming for April 22nd. Until the private company started providing rides last year, Russia provided the only elevator for space station personnel once the NASA shuttle stopped flying.
The operations on the American side of the orbital laboratory would be hampered if no Americans – only Russians – were on board, according to Vande Hei. It’s also a symbolic issue after 20 years of American astronauts in space, he noted. The astronauts there must now leave in April and May.
The good news is that NASA has managed to launch its clothing out there. Otherwise, the retired colonel of the army would have been trapped with much larger outfits intended for someone else.
Surnames Hei expects to receive its second COVID-19 vaccine this week. He remains vigilant about wearing masks, even when he and his Russian crew are practicing in spacecraft.
“It’s not very comfortable, but it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
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