NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei lands in Kazakhstan after nearly a year in space

The Soyuz MS-19 capsule landed safely in Kazakhstan on Wednesday morning. The capsule made its flight from the International Space Station with American astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov on board. Hei, 55, is completing his second mission to the ISS and logged a U.S. record of 355 consecutive days in orbit. And despite current world events, NASA has said the U.S. and Russian ISS crew members have been working professionally together.

After nearly a year in space, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is back on Earth.

The crew, consisting of Vanda Hei and Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov, touched down in Kazakhstan on Wednesday morning.

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(Feb. 4, 2022) --- NASA astronaut and Expedition 66 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei peers at the Earth below from inside the seven-windowed cupola, the International Space Station's window to the world. Just outside the cupola is the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship docked to the Rassvet module. (NASA)

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(Feb. 9, 2022) --- NASA astronaut and Expedition 66 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei services components inside the Multi-use Variable-G Platform, a biology research device that can generate up to 2G of artfifical gravity. (NASA)

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(Feb. 21, 2022) --- NASA astronaut and Expedition 66 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei harvests plants growing for the Veggie PONDS experiment and collects samples for later analysis. The space agriculture study explores growing crops in space to sustain crews on missions beyond low-Earth orbit. (NASA)

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(Feb. 10, 2022) --- NASA astronaut and Expedition 66 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei configures the Combustion Integrated Rack in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module to support a pair of fire safety experiments known as SoFIE, or Solid Fuel Ignition and Extinction. (NASA)

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NASA astronaut and Expedition 65 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei conducts research inside the Life Science Glovebox for the Kidney Cells-02 experiment that seeks to improve treatments for kidney stones and osteoporosis (NASA)

Spending 355 days in low-Earth orbit, Vande Hei now holds the record for the longest American spaceflight. He beats the previous record, held by retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, by 15 days.

Vande Hei arrived at the International Space Station on April 9, 2021. He contributed to dozens of studies on the hundreds executed during his mission during his time there.

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Since Vande Hei launched in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, that is also how he returned home. The re-entry comes about a month into Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The ongoing war has displaced millions and created tensions between the Russian Space program, Roscosmos, and countries it usually partners with on spaceflights.

Doctors, human research personnel, representatives from the astronaut office and some officials from the U.S. Embassy were there on their return.

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According to NASA, Vande Hei traveled more than 150 million miles and orbited the Earth 5,800 times during his space stay.