Russian Cosmonauts Smash Record for Longest Stay on the ISS

Two cosmonauts person acceptable the grounds for the astir days spent continuously aboard the International Space Station (ISS), surpassing the erstwhile grounds holders, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, and Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev.

On Friday, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub broke the grounds for the longest-duration enactment connected the ISS, according to Russian state-run media outlet TASS. The brace launched to Earth orbit connected September 15, 2023, arsenic portion of the Expedition 71 crew, and are scheduled to instrumentality to Earth connected September 23, spending a full of 374 days connected committee the abstraction station.

The erstwhile grounds holders are U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio, and Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev. The trio spent a full of 370 days connected committee the ISS owed to a faulty Soyuz spacecraft that led to them being stranded successful abstraction and extending their six-month agelong ngo to implicit a year.

This clip around, nary spacecraft glitches are to blasted for the caller record, and 1 of the cosmonauts is nary alien to clip spent floating successful microgravity. Aside from his consecutive days successful orbit record, the 59-year-old Kononenko besides precocious became the archetypal idiosyncratic to scope 1,000 cumulative days spent successful space, Spaceflight Now reported.

After his existent ngo wraps up, Kononenko volition person spent a full of 1,111 days successful space. With each those days successful orbit, Kononenko has acold surpassed the erstwhile grounds holder, cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who logged much than 878 days successful space.

Kononenko’s ongoing ngo connected committee the ISS is his 5th flight, and 3rd clip arsenic commandant of the abstraction station. “I alert into abstraction to bash my favourite thing, not to acceptable records,” Kononenko told TASS successful an interrogation from the ISS, Reuters reported. “I americium arrogant of each my achievements, but I americium much arrogant that the grounds for the full duration of quality enactment successful abstraction is inactive held by a Russian cosmonaut.”

He is referring to the grounds of longest wide continuous enactment successful space, which is held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov. The cosmonaut spent 437 consecutive days onboard the erstwhile Mir abstraction presumption betwixt 1994 and 1995.

The inhabitants of the ISS assistance scientists larn much astir the effects the microgravity situation has connected the quality body. As NASA and different abstraction agencies program for aboriginal missions to the Moon and Mars, information gathered from the prime fewer humans who person been to abstraction remains important successful processing ways to mitigate the dangers of long-duration spaceflight.

More: ‘I Would Have Declined’: NASA’s Frank Rubio Reflects connected Unintended Year successful Space