US astronaut ends spaceflight in Russian capsule amid geopolitical crisis

On Wednesday, March 30th, a NASA astronaut caught a Russian ride back to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS), returning with two cosmonauts as the Russia-Ukraine crisis entered its second month. Mark Vande Hei, who had broken a US record of 355 days at the ISS, landed in a Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan. With him was the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos’s Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, who also spent the past year in space. Despite escalating tensions between the US and Russia over the geopolitical crisis, Vande Hei’s return followed customary procedures.