Two Russian cosmonauts have returned to Earth after spending a record-breaking 374 days on the International Space Station. Even more impressively, one of them — 60-year-old Oleg Kononenko — is now the person with the most-ever time in space.
Kononenko has spent a staggering 1,111 days in orbit over five missions, beginning in 2008. Gennady Padalka set the previous record in 2015 with 878 days over five missions.
During his more than three years in space, Kononenko orbited the Earth 17,800 times and completed seven spacewalks. He is responsible for 1.5% of the time spent in space by all astronauts since the first human space flight in 1961.
Oleg Kononenko. Photo: Central Asia News
Second home
Kononenko and Russian partner Nikolai Chub left the ISS and landed in Kazakhstan after 3.5 hours aboard the Soyuz MS-25 capsule in the company of NASA astronaut Tracey Caldwell Dyson. Commented Kononenko, “Thanks to all my crewmates for your friendship…Right now, I am leaving my second home.”
“Oleg, we’ll miss your hundreds of stories around the dinner table,” said NASA’s Sunita Williams, who took over command of the ISS from Kononenko.
Achieving the most time in space was never Kononenko’s goal. When he first set the new record for non-cumulative days in February, he insisted, “I fly into space to do my favorite thing, not to set records. I’ve…aspired to become a cosmonaut since I was a child.”
It is unknown whether he will ever set foot in space again. He has not commented on retiring but previously said that with each trip, the preparations get harder and that taking part in the missions becomes ever more complicated.
It is unlikely that anyone will break his record in the near future. NASA tends to run shorter missions than Roscomos, so it’s harder for American astronauts to rack up that long in space. There is also now limited time available on the ISS before it is deorbited in 2030.
Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev has the next most time in space — 567 total days. To break Kononenko’s record, he will have to do so on both the ISS and China’s Tiangong Space Station. Russia will withdraw from the ISS in 2025.
