He will live and work for more or less 353 days in the orbiting laboratory, beating Scott Kelly's 340 days in the cosmos. The American Mark Vande Hei will spend about a year in space.
At Nasa we are preparing to break a space record: an astronaut will become the American who will have made the longest stay in the cosmos. Mark Vande Hei will stay on the International Space Station for about a year until March for a total of about 353 days in orbit. The man left in April and has been living and working in the orbiting laboratory ever since. The announcement was made by the astronaut himself on Twitter on September 14: "I will be on the Space Station until March 2022 for a 353-day mission, a possibility for which I had been preparing from the beginning. The opportunity for this experience, with wonderful colleagues, while making contributions to science and future exploration, is exciting."
The record for the longest single stay in Space by an American astronaut
With his 353-day stay in the Cosmos, Mark Vande Hei will break the previous record held by Scott Kelly of 340 days in Space. In a video, the astronaut explained that he believes "all astronauts are explorers at heart" and added that he "can't wait to see what it feels like to do something like this. Also in the clip, Vande Hei pointed out that the extended stay will provide an opportunity to understand how the human body withstands long spaceflights that will be needed in the future to visit distant destinations in depth, such as the planet Mars. Indeed, Mark Vande Hei's experience will help prepare for Artemis missions to the Moon and possibly long-duration missions to Mars.
Normally, visits to space stations last about six and a half months, but a round trip to the Red Planet could take two years, according to NASA. The American astronaut's extended stay is possible thanks to Russia's Roscosmos mission, which will take a cosmonaut, an actor and a filmmaker into orbit in October. The latter two will spend about two weeks in the orbiting laboratory to shoot a film, "Challenge," while Russian astronaut Pyotr Dubrov will remain on the Iss with Mark Vande Hei until March.
In the meantime, NASA continues with its projects and continues to make progress in the study of Space. Recently it has succeeded in extracting the first sample of rock on Mars and has discovered how the heart of the Red Planet is made.
Stefania Bernardini