No, Russia has not threatened to leave an American astronaut behind in space

Enlarge / Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin has been tweeting like he's unhinged since Russia invaded Ukraine. (credit: Yegor AleyevTASS via Getty Images)

It has now been half a month since Russia invaded Ukraine, setting into motion a set of consequences that have reverberated around the world.

In the space domain, this has led to a severing of ties between the West and Russia. Space News, for example, tallied up 16 commercial launches that had been scheduled to fly on the Russian Soyuz rocket during the next two years. These payloads are now stranded, affecting customers ranging from the private company OneWeb, to the European Commission, to the government of Sweden. And the joint Europe-Russia probe scheduled to launch to Mars this year, ExoMars, will be delayed for years and may very well be canceled, sources say.

Naturally this has led to speculation about the fate of the International Space Station, which has 15 partner nations and is the crown jewel of unity in space between NASA and Russia. In recent days there have been a number of stories about Russian "threats" to abandon NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei on the space station. Vande Hei is scheduled to return to Earth in a Soyuz capsule at the end of this month, landing in Kazakhstan. NASA officials are expected to be there to greet him and bring him back to the United States.

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