Homecoming NASA astronaut explains how he spent a year on ISS; 'Meditation & gratefulness'

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is ready to head home from the International Space Station (ISS) after spending nearly a year in space. He is scheduled to leave the ISS on March 30 in a Russian spacecraft and will land in Kazakhstan after a seven-hour flight. Set to make a record of staying 355 days in space- the longest by an American-, Vande Hei revealed how he managed to stay in space for the said period. 

Meditation and gratefulness helped me survive, says Vande Hei

Answering during a Q&A session held at the ISS, Vande Hei said, “I had to spend a lot of time, try to make a habit of every day. Meditating. That certainly helped out a lot with keeping myself in a kind of a good, grounded frame of mind”. He further said, “And like I mentioned earlier, the most important thing was recognizing that I had to stay focused on what I was doing at the moment and also one more thing. Trying to look for things to be grateful for as opposed to things to gripe about. That goes a long way with making whatever you’re doing more palatable”. 

On March 30, Vande Hei will break the record of longest stay in space by a US astronaut surpassing the previous number of 523 days. He will be accompanied by two Russian counterparts- Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov in the Soyuz MS-19 capsule. 

The American astronaut's return in the Russian capsule had become a matter of concern in the last few days after the Russian space agency Roscosmos severed ties with various space agencies including NASA. Multiple reports by western media claimed that Russia might abandon Vande Hei aboard the ISS. However, these rumors were quashed by Roscosmos’s Director General Dmitry Rogozin who dismissed the claims calling them ‘hysterical’. 

Watch the astronauts leave the ISS

The astronauts aboard the ISS would bid farewell to the trio during the hatch closure which is scheduled for March 30 at 9:30 am (IST). The Soyuz capsule would then undock from the space station at 12:51 pm followed by the deorbit burn and landing which is targeted for 4:58 pm. According to NASA, the coverage of the crew’s farewells, undocking, and landing will air live on NASA TV, the agency’s website, and the NASA app about a half-hour before the aforementioned times.