on march 30th nasa's Mark Vande Hei stepped foot on earth for the first time
in nearly a year earlier this week i talked to the astronaut about his record-setting journey
nasa astronaut Mark Vande Hei has set a new record for the single longest space flight by an american
spending 355 days in orbit and surpassing the record held by retired astronaut scott kelly
so 355 days in space when you left for this flight did you know it would last that long
uh Geoff i did not know it was it would last that long i knew it was a possibility and thankfully
my wife and i decided to assume that was going to be what would happen so it made it very easy
for us to adapt to whatever happened what's been the biggest adjustment returning to earth
the biggest adjustment returned to earth has been finding stuff in my kitchen
my wife has done a lot of remodeling and i i keep having i had to ask where the garbage bags were
i've had to ask where the utensils are so i'm it'll take me a little while to catch up but i'm
getting there it's understandable after spending nearly a year on the international space station
which Vande Hei describes as an orbiting laboratory with hundreds of experiments
it's the only place to study the long-term effects of zero gravity he is now an experiment himself
helping expand nasa's knowledge about how the human body adapts to long-term space flight
as the agency plans for future missions to the moon and to mars how do you feel well i feel a
little more achy than i did before i launched i feel better than i would have expected though i'm
very pleasantly surprised at how quickly things are readapting but uh whenever i bend over to tie
my shoes it gets my attention my lower the muscles the small muscles in my lower back
have been uh deconditioned with not having the ability to fall down for 355 days what is space
station living like and how do you keep your wits about you when you're there for such an
extended period of time the view is absolutely incredible and i think keeping your sanity on
the space station depends a lot on understanding the type of narrative you give yourself about how
you're doing if you if you're beating yourself up about every little mistake or filling in gaps or
making assumptions that people don't think you're doing a good job it can make it very very rough
to be on the space station so you've got to be aware of that i read that you did a fair amount
of meditating and there's this phenomenal picture of you in this sort of tiny cupola where you are
meditating and you can just see the universe all around you what was that like that was amazing uh
for the majority of the flight i meditated in my crew quarters so it's kind of like a little closet
it's your own private space and then at some point i realized that it might be nice to meditate
with my eyes open and looking outside some of my favorite moments with that was because i did that
early in the morning before everybody else was awake i had the ability to turn off all the lights
and if it was at night looking out those windows with about 10-15 minutes for my eyes to adjust
the stars were just glorious it was absolutely amazing i don't even know how to describe it
the international space station started as a joint effort between the u.s and russia in the late 90s
in the wake of the cold war it was considered a major feat of international collaboration but now
putin's bloody invasion of ukraine has severely strained u.s russia relations i asked vanda
high if the events on the ground affected his relationship in space with his russian cosmonaut
crewmates it didn't negatively affect our relationship it was something that we did not talk
about often it just with how focused we were on cooperating and doing our our our job every day to
help further the accomplishments we were making to help out all of humanity it really we had to stay
focused on our job how did you become an astronaut i understand you have a background in physics
you're a retired army colonel you served in iraq how did you go from that to being an astronaut
there is one incredibly important step in becoming an astronaut for everybody is you've got to apply
usajobs.gov i think is the current way we do that just like every other federal job so you
you applied to be an astronaut just like on the website yes that's part of the process and
the reason i bring that up is i almost didn't because i thought there was no way they'd
ever hire me and my wife said hey how are you going to know if you don't try so i tried but
again i didn't think it would work so the message i'm trying to get out to all of you out there
is it doesn't hurt to try it's just some of your time that is phenomenal that you applied
on a website like any of us would apply for a job on a website and you became an astronaut
an american hero that's that's incredible so what about this experience will you remember the most
the people the people that i got to work with on the mission control team that took such incredibly
good care of us and i mean mission control teams around the world we've got mission control centers
in huntsville houston uh scuba japan um near munich germany and and moscow and especially
the support i got from my family throughout this long period of time the sacrifices they made
and the support i got from my crewmates in orbit all of those were not just essential
but they made it a pleasant experience Mark Vande Hei thank you for your service and your
sacrifice in the name of science and exploration oh thanks you thanks very much Geoff appreciate it