after nearly a year in space Nasa astronaut astrona
Mark van der Aa and two Russian cosmonauts are back
Earth. There is the touchdown right there in Centra
Kazakhstan The Russian soyuz rocket undocked from the
international space station early this morning and
landed in Kazakhstan. They retu home at a time of
course of high tensions between their respecti
countries over the war in Ukraine. But some history
nonetheless. Exactly. Van days, 355 days on board the
International space station is the longest single space
flight by an american astronaut. So really cool despi
the backdrop obviously with this, what's going on with
Russia and Ukraine but really exciting stuff to have
him back. Let's bring in retired Nasa astronaut and
former international space station commander Leroy chow
joining us from Houston Leroy, thank you so much. Let's
just talk about this history making moment here by Mark
van der Aa. What's going through your head as you're
coming down in a capsule like that Um he's been
weightless in space for nearly a year. Right So
obviously the crew was very excited to be coming back.
I had wrapped up a very successful mission and so
know, one more task and that is a successful landing
which we just saw. And so you know at this moment
they're uh they're still laying on their backs and so
they're they're not feeling particularly dizzy or
uncomfortable but once they stand up they're gonna feel
really busy. Are you a little like are you a little
wobbly when you try to get up after that. Oh definitel
Yeah. Even after a short space shuttle mission of of a
week or two, you definitely still have those sam
effects that go away a lot more quickly after a short
flight, the long duration flight, it's a little more
intense and it takes a little longer to to readjust an
imagine what it would be like. Oh my gosh I know and
this may be a silly question, but I know my ears pop
when I'm on an airplane. So how is it painful when you
come back and you actually touched down on Earth with
your ears But in particular the spacecraft is
maintained at one atmosphere. So you don't get that
popping effect. A commercial airliner. The pressure is
usually maintained at about 8000 ft pressure. And so
you do you do equalize the spacecraft before
You know, you're still pretty h up so you do have to
kind of equalize your pressure eventually. But but
you're you're in your space suit or your pressure suit,
you've got your visors closed and so you don't have
that same effect on the commercial because that is
annoying. Okay. Okay, let's talk about the actual
mission itself. What type of information or Nasa and
the Russian space agency gathering from these long term
space flights Long duration flights. I mean the primary
purpose of are the primary experiments that we do
aboard the I.S.S. Are physiological. So the the
astronauts will, cosmonauts wil take a lot of
measurements on themselves uh samples are sent back and
what we're trying to do is understand and figure out
what we call bio medical countermeasures on how to keep
astronauts and cosmonauts healt on a long duration
spaceflight in preparation for a voyage to mars. You
know, So that's that's why most missions around six
months in duration. Because that's what we would expect
one way when the planets are aligned to go either from
the Earth to MARS or MArs back to Earth. So we're
collecting data. We're testing countermeasures which
include exercise of course and and pharmaceuticals and
other things. Just to figure out how we can keep
astronauts healthy for that hopefully upcoming MARS
mission. Right. And it was so cool to see that video
that we had playing just now. So since they launched
into space, you know, obviously we've seen tensions
between Russia and the US escalating pretty
significantly given the war in Ukraine, how does that
affect their ability to work together with respect to
the space programs Well, fortunately, as we saw today,
it hasn't materially affected the partnership. What is
concerning of course, is the head of Roskosmos, the
Director Dmitry Rogozin is a political appointee of
course a very close ally of President Putin. And so he
is the first and only director of the space agency to
openly threaten the partnership You know, and he he
was there were veiled and not so veiled threats about
leaving Mark van der Aa in orbit. Uh, there were, you
know, kind of these images of separating the Russia
segment from the american segment of the ISS, which
really for is not practical. Uh, you know, I know, I'm
sure his uh technical advisors told him, hey, we really
can't do this. And so it's um, you know, fortunately
we've seen cooler heads prevailed and the partnership
survives and no hits at all. No question that Mark van
der Aa was coming down on today's spacecraft, Is that
something that ever comes up just political situations
What's happening with conflicts around the world
between, you know, you're working with your, your
Russian counterparts essentiall up there on something
that seems totally independent from anything that could
be happening down on earth. But it's also, it's tough
to ignore, it would seem. Oh sure. Yeah. I mean, of
course everybody on board knows each other very well,
been training together and in many cases for years
together. So, you know, each other very well. You
become good friends and just like your friends here on
Earth, you can have differing opinions on, on diffe
political things that are going on. You can discuss
them sometimes it can get even a little bit heated. But
at the end of the day, you're still friends and y
still respect each other's opinions and so part of
training in each other's countries as you develop that
perspective to understand the other side's viewpoints
and why it might be different doesn't mean you
necessarily agree, but at least you can understand each
other and that helps a lot. So there's no tension on
board the professionals on the ground. It's the same.
The mission control flight controllers in Moscow and
Houston, very strong friendships between those two
groups And very great, great working relationships and
engineers and everyone involved all professionals on
all sides, making sure that the space flights are as
safe as possible. So that 355 days that van was up
there is pretty, seems pretty significant. Can you jus
talk about how big of a deal that is Yes, that's a very
long time. You know, my mission to the ISS many years
ago, just before launch, a few months before launch,
there was a possibility that we would have to fly for a
year basically to accommodate a tourist taking our
return seats. And fortunately that didn't come about.
But you know, we were like, whoa, you know, because w
were training with the expectation of a 6.5 months
flight. We would have, we would have accepted a year
long flight, but you know, year a lot. It's a lot of
time to spend up there. 6.5 months is already a lot of
time. Uh, and it has to do with your mental preparat
as long as you, you know what you're getting into a
you're set your expectations. It's it's okay. So
recently three um, cosmonauts were wore yellow space
suits and the international space station who chooses
what cosmonauts where during their missions in space
and how could that choice be interpreted Yes. So when
the three latest cosmonauts arrived at the I.S.S. Their
flight suits were orange in color with with some blue
blue striping on it. And people of course speculated
what that meant. Uh the the crew does choose their
their clothing. They but this has done months in
advance. And so this would have been the selections
would have been made much before the the current
invasion of Ukraine. And so, you know, coincidence or
not, these colors are also happened to be the colors of
the university. Were all three cosmonauts graduated
from. And of course they they made a kind of a little
bit of a joke when, when asked about the colors of
their flight suits, fire Roskosmos. Their reply was,
well there's a lot of yellow material left. So our
flight suits are yellow. I was about to speculate and
say wouldn't have anything to do with Ukraine. It was
like staring at. But that that school, I don't know,
I'm I'm sure there, I'm sure there are a lot of
cosmonauts that are not not pro war who opposed the war.
But of course there they're smart enough to do that.
They know where they live and they can't openly say
anything. And I don't know it's possible. It was uh,
you know, kind of a lucky coincidence that it turne
out to be uh you know, making a statement of some kind
maybe in a subtle way. But like I said, these these
selections are made months before the flight. And so
you know, it was long before the war started. Yeah. S
they landed obviously what happ the rest of the day
What are they doing So they'll be they'll be out of the
capsule pretty quickly. It take about 20 minutes or so
for the ground. The crew that lands in the helicopters
to come over and get the hatch open. They'll step th
down and lawn chairs and let them relax for a few
moments to give them a quick look over and give them,
the you know satellite phone so they can call their
families and tell them they're safe and they'll they'l
do a quick medical check and then you know, get them
out of their suits to a quick medical check and then
get them on the airplanes to go back to Star City.
Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Moment there Leroy chow,
retired Nasa astronaut and former International Space
station commander. Thank you so much for your time and
your insight sir. We appreciate you coming on. Oh my
pleasure. Thank you