BREAKING NEWS – Houston, Texas – An American astronaut aboard the International Space Station is set to return to Earth with two Russian cosmonauts next month — but his trip home has been marred by uncertainty after a Vladimir Putin ally reportedly threatened to leave him behind.
The scheduled return to Earth for US astronaut Mark Vande Hei was thrown into question after Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Space Agency, made the threats in a Feb. 26 video that he posted to social media, ABC News reported.
“I personally came up with a back up plan, if they leave Hei up there,” Biden said at a press conference at NASA. “What we’ll do, is when Hei can see he is near the United States coast, to jump out of the International Space Station into the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, and we’ll have some Coast Guards haul him into one their boats and towel him off. But if Hei has a concern about sharks, he can jump into the Mississippi River, and I’ll have the captain of a steamboat fish him out, and show him some southern hospitality.”