A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut left the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday and is due to land in Kazakhstan in the afternoon, in a rare example of cooperation in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis.
The Soyuz MS-19 capsule, in which Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov travel, as well as American Mark Vande Hei, was released from the ISS at 07H21 GMT as planned, Russian space agency Roscosmos reported.
The landing should occur at 11H28 GMT in southeastern Kazakhstan, according to the same source.
This trip takes place amid strong tensions over Ukraine between Russia and Western countries, with the United States leading the way, which have called into question several projects in the field of space cooperation.
In early March, Roscosmos posted a video in which he joked about the possibility that the American would stay on the ISS instead of returning to Earth aboard a Soyuz rocket.
Given the concern of the Americans, the Russian agency had to assure them that the astronaut would be on the trip.
Mark Vande Hei holds the record for consecutive days in space for an American astronaut, with 355 days.
Against this backdrop of tensions, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitri Rogozin, who multiplies nationalist statements on social networks, said in mid-March that the operation of Russian spacecraft supplying the ISS will be disrupted by Western sanctions against Russia by the operation in Ukraine.
According to him, this could lead to the “landing or landing of the ISS, which weighs 500 tons”.
Space cooperation between Russia and Western countries was one of the few areas that had not suffered much from the sanctions imposed on Moscow following the 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula.
But in recent weeks, several cooperation projects have been affected by the crisis in Ukraine.
The European Space Agency (ESA) announced in mid-March the suspension of the Russian-European mission Exo-Mars and the search for alternatives to carry out four other missions.
(with information from AFP)
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