Russia's Ukraine Ordeal Won't Affect US Astronaut Trips to Space Station, NASA Says

This image from a NASA space shuttle mission shows the International Space Station in orbit. The space station is the size of a football field and home to six astronauts. Image taken: Feb. 10, 2010. Credit: NASA

Tensions between the United States and Russia are heightened as three International Space Station crewmembers (one American astronaut, and two cosmonauts) plan to fly back to Earth on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Monday (March 10). NASA officials are confident that the landing will not be affected by the current political climate, however. U.S. and Russian relations have been stressed in recent days due to the situation in the Ukraine.

"We have an excellent relationship with our Russian colleagues in the space program and obviously the crew has an excellent relationship with one another," NASA spokesman Josh Byerly told Space.com. "All plans are on track for both the landing and the launch that we've got coming up in a few weeks." [See photos of the station's Expedition 38 crew]

Shortly after NASA's Mike Hopkins, Russia's Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy land in Kazakhstan, three more crewmembers will launch to the station atop a Soyuz rocket. NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, will depart Earth for their stints on the orbiting outpost on March 25.

Hopkins, Kotov and Ryazanskiy are currently joined by NASA's Rick Mastracchio, Japan's Koichi Wakata and Russia's Mikhail Tyurin, who together make up the station's Expedition 38 crew. Mastracchio, Wakata and Tyurin are expected to land back on Earth in May.

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