Mark Vande Hei is due to fly to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and
Anton Shkaplerov on March 30 after 355 days in space, a new US record.
There have been fears that soaring tensions between the US
and Russia over Ukraine could leave the 55-year-old stranded on the outpost.
But speaking to reporters Monday, Joel Montalbano, NASA's
ISS program manager, said: "I can tell you for sure Mark is coming home on
that Soyuz. We are in communication with our Russian colleagues. There's no
fuzz on that. The three crew members are coming home."
"There's been some discussion about that, but I can
tell you we're ready. Our Roscosmos colleagues have confirmed that they're
ready to bring the whole crew home, all three of them," he continued.
Over the weekend, Russian space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin
warned again that Western sanctions on Russia could cause the ISS to crash, by
disrupting the operation of spacecraft vital to keeping the platform in orbit.
But on Monday, the Russian news agency TASS reported:
"Russia's space corporation Roscosmos has never given its partners the
slightest chance to doubt its reliability" and Vande Hei would go home as
planned.
Montalbano added that there had been no changes in
day-to-day activities.
"All these activities have continued for 20 years and
nothing has changed in the last three weeks: our control centers operate
successfully, flawlessly, seamlessly."
While the US side of the ISS supplies power and life
support, the Russian segment is vital for propulsion and attitude control —
interdependencies that were woven into the project from its inception in the
1990s.
The US is exploring means to keep the station in orbit via
propulsion from Northrop Grumman and SpaceX ships, but this hasn't happened
yet.
Crew swaps involving Russian cosmonauts going to Hawthorne,
California to train on SpaceX vehicles and American astronauts traveling to
Star City in Russia to train for Soyuz are still planned "at this
time," said Montalbano.