[ti:US Astronaut to Ride Russian Spacecraft Back to Earth] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]United States astronaut Mark Vande Hei [00:03.88]has made it through nearly a year in space. [00:07.40]Now, he faces an unusual situation: [00:11.48]At the end of the month, [00:13.32]he is going to ride a Russian spacecraft back to Earth [00:17.28]as tensions deepen between the countries. [00:21.16]Vande Hei — who recently broke [00:23.56]the U.S. single spaceflight record of 340 days [00:28.28]— is due to leave the International Space Station (ISS) [00:33.44]with two Russians in a Soyuz capsule. [00:37.12]They will land in Kazakhstan on March 30. [00:41.76]The astronaut will have spent 355 days in space by then, [00:47.04]setting a new U.S. record. [00:49.84]The world record of 438 continuous days in space belongs to Russia. [00:56.60]NASA insists Vande Hei's return plans at the end of the month [01:01.92]remain unchanged, even as Russia's invasion of Ukraine [01:06.40]has resulted in canceled launches, broken contracts [01:11.04]and a war of words with the Russian Space Agency's leader, Dmitry Rogozin. [01:17.56]Retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is among those arguing with Rogozin, [01:24.40]a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin. [01:27.32]Angered by what is going on in Ukraine, [01:31.00]Kelly has returned his Russian medal for space exploration [01:35.72]to the Russian Embassy in Washington. [01:38.68]Despite the conflict on Earth, [01:41.40]Kelly believes the two sides "can hold it together" up in space. [01:47.32]He told the Associated Press, "We need an example set [01:51.68]that two countries that historically have not been on the most friendly of terms, [01:57.04]can still work somewhere peacefully. [01:59.48]And that somewhere is the International Space Station. [02:03.68]That's why we need to fight to keep it." [02:07.16]NASA wants to keep the space station running until 2030, [02:11.52]as do the European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies, [02:16.36]while the Russians have not committed beyond the original end date of 2024. [02:22.08]The U.S. and Russia are the main operators of the ISS, [02:27.36]which has been permanently occupied for 21 years. [02:32.56]Until SpaceX started launching astronauts in 2020, [02:37.32]Americans regularly got rides on Russian Soyuz capsules [02:42.20]for tens of millions of dollars per seat. [02:46.48]The U.S. and Russian space agencies [02:49.40]are still working on a long-term plan [02:52.40]in which a Russian would launch on a SpaceX capsule [02:56.36]beginning this fall and an American would fly up on the Soyuz. [03:01.68]That would permit a U.S. and Russian station presence at all times. [03:07.44]Vande Hei, 55, a retired Army colonel, [03:12.24]moved into the space station last April, [03:15.52]launching on a Soyuz from Kazakhstan [03:18.64]with Pyotr Dubrov and another Russian. [03:22.40]He and Dubrov stayed twice as long as usual [03:26.24]to help with a Russian film crew that visited in October. [03:31.00]As the situation 420 kilometers below became worse last month, [03:37.72]Vande Hei said he was avoiding discussions about Ukraine [03:41.76]with Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov, their Russian commander. [03:47.40]Three more Russians will launch from Kazakhstan on Friday to replace them. [03:53.12]"We haven't talked about that too much. [03:56.04]I'm not sure we really want to go there," [03:58.68]Vande Hei told a TV reporter in mid-February. [04:03.44]Space station operations continue as always [04:06.76]— in orbit and on Earth, according to NASA. [04:10.52]"It would be a sad day for international operations [04:14.24]if we can't continue to peacefully operate in space," [04:18.24]said NASA's human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders, [04:22.44]who noted it would be "very difficult" to do space research alone. [04:27.48]I'm John Russell. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM