Russian Cosmonauts Did Not Wear Ukraine Flag Colors On Space Station - US Astronaut

The three-man Russian replacement crew to the International Space Station (ISS) were not wearing the Ukrainian flag when they wore yellow-colored space suits on their March 18 journey into orbit, returned US astronaut Mark Vande Hei told a NASA press conference on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 05th April, 2022) The three-man Russian replacement crew to the International Space Station (ISS) were not wearing the Ukrainian flag when they wore yellow-colored space suits on their March 18 journey into orbit, returned US astronaut Mark Vande Hei told a NASA press conference on Tuesday.

"As for the yellow flight suits, I think no one thought they would be identified with Ukraine," Vande Hei said. "They chose them because that was the colors of their university they were associated with: I think they were blindsided by (the Western media reaction to) it.".

The three cosmonauts - Oleg Artemiev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov - are all graduates of Bauman Moscow State Technical University and in honor of this, the flight of the ship was named "Bauman launch", Sputnik previously reported.

Vande Hei landed successfully in Kazakhstan on March 30 with his two Russian crew mates cosmonauts, Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, after 355 days in space, breaking the duration record in space for any US astronaut.

The overall duration record is held by cosmonaut Valery Poliyakov who logged 437 days in space on a single mission on the Mir EO-15 space station.