Mark Vande Hei is currently scheduled to spend six months aboard the International Space Station, but the possible arrival of a Russian film crew means he will have to give up his return home, forcing the veteran NASA astronaut to spend an entire year in space.
Vande Hei only recently learned that he is officially joining the Soyuz MS-18 mission, and is now being told that his stay aboard the ISS could last until spring 2022, rather than ending. this October.
He and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov are scheduled for launch on April 9 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. C.osmonaut Sergey Korsakov was supposed to be on MS-18, but one unusual arrangement involving NASA, Roscosmos and the American private company Axiom Space made the flight possible for Vande Hei. In return, Axiom Stempo accommodates a cosmonaut in 2023. This is done to ensure an uninterrupted US presence on the ISS – a series of continuity that dates back more than 20 years.
Vande Hei, who has been preparing for months, will join the crew of Expedition 64/65 on board the ISS. S.If the newly announced plan to film a movie on board the station continues, he will be in space twice as long as originally planned.
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Russian director Klim Shipenko and an actress later named can participate in the Soyuz MS-19 mission, scheduled for launch in October, as AP reportsThe working title of the movie is Vyzov, which means ‘challenge’ in English, and is intended to ‘showcase Russian space activities and glorify the profession of cosmonauts,’ according to a press releaseThe film is produced by the Russian ‘Channel One’ and a television studio, per AP.
Once the filming activities are complete, Shipenko and his partner, along with Novitskiy, would return home on MS-18, probably within a week. The two seats were intended for Vande Hei and Dubrov, meaning the couple may have to stay on the ISS until the next return trip home, likely in the spring of 2022.
Vande Hei, who spent 168 days in space from September 2017 to February 2018, appeared unfazed about the whole thing.
“Honestly, for me it’s just a chance for a new life experience,” he said told reporters yesterday at the press conference. “I’ve never been in space for more than six months,” he said. “I am very excited about it.”
Sending “tourists” to space is nothing new to Roscosmos. The Russian space agency started doing this in 2001, at a rumored fee of $ 20 million per seat, according to to Space Policy Online. In total, seven tourists made the trek to space, but these missions stopped about 10 years ago, when NASA, unable to launch its own astronauts into space, started scooping up the extra Soyuz seats. As Space Policy Online points out, the successful development of SpaceX’s CrewDragon means that NASA is no longer dependent on Russia, leaving Roscosmos Register space tourists, or in this case, filmmakers.
S.speculation about actor Tom Cruise going to the ISS to shoot one movie remains unconfirmed, but if such an endeavor were to happen, Axiom Space would likely be involved.
As noted earlier, NASA is no longer dependent on Roscosmos when it comes to launching astronauts into space. If the space agency really, really wants to bring back Vande Hei, it could tap SpaceX for the task. But the extended stay would give scientists more opportunity to research the long termterm effects of microgravity on the human body, something we need to know more about before humans can visit Mars.
Here’s another thing to think about: Kate Rubins is the backup NASA astronaut for MS-18. If Vande Hei could not participate in the mission next month and if the Russian was planning to film a movie, that means that Rubins would. stay in space for more than a year. This would give her the chance to break the female record for extensive spaceflight, currently held by Christina Koch, who recently spent 328 days in space.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, with his Russian crew member Mikhail Kornienko, spent 340 days aboard the ISS as part of a mission that ended five years ago. The overall record belongs to cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov, who spent 437 days aboard the Mir space station, followed by Sergei Avdeyev, who spent 380 consecutive days. days in orbit