In his last mission to space, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Heimakes a safe return to Earth on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.
aboard a Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, Vande Hei and two cosmonauts, Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov, were picked up in a remote area southwest of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.
Back on Earth for the first time in nearly a year, the crew was met with a crowd of international agency officials. With the astronauts adjusting their space legs to Earth’s gravity, they were carried out of the spacecraft into medical tents. Vande Hei was whisked back to Houston, and cosmonauts Dubrov and Shkaplerov went to a training base in Star City Russia..
, but days later, NASA reassured the public that their Russian colleagues would remain professional throughout exit operations. “Each of the partners have different capabilities that they bring and together we work,“ said ISS program manager Joel Montalbano, in aExpedition 66 crew members Mark Vande Hei of NASA cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos, are seen inside their Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft after landing near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, Wednesday, March 30, 2022.Russia’s Soyuz crafts have been used to ferry cosmonauts to and from the International Space Station for decades.