The Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko has just set a new record for (non-continuous) time in space, surpassing the 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds of its predecessor, fellow Russian Guennadi Padalka.
Kononenko, who has been on the International Space Station (ISS) since last September, set the new mark on Sunday at 11:30:08 Moscow time (30/08/08 GMT).
The 59-year-old Russian is now completing his fifth mission to the orbital platform and will set a new record of 1,110 days when he returns to Earth on September 23rd. The thousand days will be reached on June 5th, twenty minutes after midnight.
In statements to the TASS agency, he assured that in the future man will have to build a station that is “an authentic space house”, larger and more comfortable and less dependent on the Earth.
To this end, he recommended improving water regeneration, oxygen supply and space debris recycling systems.
Kononenko, engineer of Expedition Number 70 and commander of Expedition 71, had 736 days when he traveled to the ISS aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft in September 2023.
The Russian first flew to the station in April 2008 as part of the sixteenth expedition and has since performed six spacewalks (39 hours and 54 minutes).
For his part, Padalka retired in 2017 at the age of 58 after realizing that he had no opportunity to participate in a sixth mission to the ISS and spend a thousand days in space.
“It’s a shame. It always saddens me when a prepared, experienced and motivated man with a long career leaves the ranks of cosmonauts,” commented then-Sergei Krikalyov, director of the pilot program of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
On June 29, 2015, Padalka surpassed Krikaliov’s record of 803 days in space by increasing it to 878 days on his fifth mission.