According to Roscosmos Corporation, astronaut Kononenko officially broke the record at 8:30:8 (GMT) on February 4. He is expected to reach 2 days in space on June 1.000, and by the end of September will reach 5 days.
Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko. (Photo: TASS)
This was Kononenko's fifth space flight. He flew into space last year on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft.
The previous record belonged to Gennady Padalka - whose total time in space was 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds.
“I fly into space to do what I love, not to set records,” Mr. Kononenko told TASS in an interview from the International Space Station (ISS), where he is orbiting about 423 km above Earth.
“I'm proud of all my achievements, but I'm even more proud that the record for total human time spent in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut.”
The Soviet Union stunned the West in the early years of the space race when it became the first country to launch a satellite into Earth orbit - Sputnik 1 - in 1957. After that, Soviet astronauts Yury Gagarin became the first person to travel into space in 1961.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's space program struggled with severe funding shortages.
Life in space
Kononenko says he exercises regularly to combat the physical effects of weightlessness.
“I don't feel deprived or isolated. But when I returned home, I realized that in the hundreds of days I was absent, the children had grown up without a father. No one will be able to give me back this time.”
He said astronauts can now use video calls and texting to stay in touch with loved ones, but getting ready for each space flight has become more difficult as technology advances.
“The astronaut profession is becoming more and more complicated. Systems and experiments are increasingly complex. I repeat, the preparation does not get easier,” he said.
Kononenko dreamed of space travel as a child and studied at a technical academy before undergoing astronaut training. His first space flight was in 2008.
The ISS is one of the few international projects on which the US and Russia still cooperate closely. Relations in other areas between the two countries have been rocky since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out nearly two years ago, causing Washington to respond by sending weapons to Kiev and imposing successive sanctions on Moscow.
(Source: Vanguard)
