Roskosmos said cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko broke the record at 8:30 GMT with more than 878 days in space. As expected, Mr. Kononenko will reach a total of 1.000 days in space on June 5 and by the end of September, he will reach 6 days.
Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko on the bus right before departing for the launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on September 15, 9. Photo: Reuters
“I fly into space to do what I love, not to set records,” cosmonaut Kononenko told TASS news agency in an interview from the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits the Earth. The land is at an altitude of 423 km.
“I am proud of all my achievements, but what makes me more proud is that the record for total human time in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut,” Mr. Kononenko said.
Roscosmos said the 59-year-old surpassed the old record set by compatriot Gennady Padalka before his retirement in 2017, who accumulated a total of 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds in space .
Cosmonaut Kononenko said he regularly exercises to combat the physical effects of the zero-gravity vacuum environment. In space, he did not feel deprived or isolated, but he said: "Only when I returned home did I realize that for hundreds of days I had been absent, the children had grown up without dad. No one will give me back that time."
He said astronauts can now text and video call to stay in touch with loved ones. However, technological advances make new space flights more complicated, making preparations for each flight more difficult.
Since childhood, Mr. Kononenko has dreamed of space travel. He enrolled in a technical institute before undergoing astronaut training. His first space flight was in 2008. His current flight to the ISS is set to launch in 2023 aboard Soyuz MS-24.
The ISS is one of the few international projects on which the US and Russia have remained closely cooperating since Russia launched a special military campaign in Ukraine. In December 12, Roscosmos announced that the astronaut exchange program with NASA to the ISS was extended until 2023.
In the early years of the space race, the Soviet Union terrified the West by being the first country to launch a satellite into Earth orbit in 1957, and then Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin became first traveled into space in 1961.
Hoai Phuong (according to Reuters, TASS)
