US astronaut to return to Earth on Russian vessel, NASA says no impact of Ukraine war

The Russian spacecraft will carry US' Vande Hei, and Russia's Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov.

An American astronaut is set to return to Earth on a Russian Soyuz aircraft amid tensions over the Kremlin’s intensified military campaign in Ukraine.

Russian and American astronauts (Reuters)

According to reports, the Russian vessel - with two Russian and one US astronaut - will touch down in Kazakhstan on March 30. NASA's International Space Station's (ISS) programme manager Joel Montalbano said his team members are communicating with their Russian colleagues without any issues.

According to him, everybody is aware of the ongoing geopolitical crisis but continues to work as a team. The Outer Space Treaty that forms the basis of international space law says all nations will have to provide help to astronauts when needed, and that no country can ‘own’ space.

The US astronaut, Mark Vande Hei, has created a new American record by spending the longest period in space - 340 days. The world record to stay the longest in space is held by Russia’s Cosmonaut Valery Polyakov – 438 days.

The US national is coming back to Earth along with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov.

Recently, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said Western sanctions on the Kremlin could cause the ISS to crash, by disrupting the operation of spacecraft vital to keeping the platform in orbit. Later, the Russian news agency TASS reported, "Russia's space corporation Roscosmos has never given its partners the slightest chance to doubt its reliability" and Hei would go home as planned.

Unprecedented sanctions have been imposed on Russia by the US and its Western allies over the past few weeks for its military onslaught on Ukraine. On Tuesday, the US passed a resolution unanimously condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin and branded him as a 'war criminal'.

In response, Russia has put out a ‘stop list’ barring certain US officials, including President Joe Biden and secretary of state Antony Blinken, from entering Russia. The US is also actively punishing countries that are supporting the Putin-led invasion of Ukraine.