New NASA record for spaceflight: Astronaut Mark Vande Hei abroad ISS for 341 consecutive days!

Almost a year in the space! A NASA astronaut has completed the exemplary feat of staying 341 days in space at a stretch. Mark Vande Hei broke the record of another former US astronaut Scott Kelly set in 2016 to better understand the effects of spaceflight on the human body.

Vande Hei completed 341 days abroad at the International Space Station since he left earth on April 9, 2021. By the time he returns to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz after completing his mission as scheduled on March 30, he will have established a new record of the maximum span of spaceflight of 355 days.

Who is  Col. Mark Vande Hei 

A retired US army colonel, Col Vande Hei joined NASA in 2009 and flew as a flight engineer on three previous ISS expeditions. His stint in spaceflight was scheduled to get over in October but got extended after a Russian filmmaker and actress reached the space station to shoot portions of the movie there.

Vande Hei has served as an Army space support team leader, then as the battalion’s operations officer, and was deployed to Iraq for 12 months in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He served as an International Space Station CAPCOM for Expeditions 15 to 20 and STS-122, 123, 124, 126, and 127 and then as a technical assistant for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. Vande Hei has also served as the assistant to the chief astronaut for extravehicular activity and robotics.

Expected return of Vande Hei from ISS

The US space mission 65 was launched in 2021 April on a Russian spaceship with two other Russian cosmonauts Soyuz and Vande Hei were sent broad the orbiting laboratory for spacewalks, science experiments, and station maintenance.  But the world changed much with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent wave of sanctions by the US derailing all space-related cooperation between the Russian space agency and its western counterpart.  But both NASA and the Russian space agency affirmed that Vande Hei will indeed return home without a doubt despite tensions between the two countries. Nevertheless, since 2020, NASA has been using SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceships to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS.

All Vande Hei becomes the US astronaut to have maximum consecutive days in space, the largest space-time by any American still is held by astronaut Peggy Whitson, who collected 665 days in space with 10 outings.

Also, the world record for both maximum consecutive and cumulative days in spaceflight belongs to Russia. Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov flew for 437 consecutive days aboard the Russian Mir space station in 1994 and 1995, while Gennady Padalka holds the world record for cumulative days in space at 879, having flown aboard both the Mir and ISS.