After the landing of two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut (Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and Tracy Dyson, respectively) this Monday in Kazakhstan, the table of space records has undergone several modifications. For example, Kononenko and Chub’s mission spanned 347 days, making it the longest mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). But without a doubt Kononenko’s is the most striking.
Born in July 1964, Kononenko served as a flight engineer on the backup crew of the Soyuz TM-34 vehicle during the crew’s third visit to the ISS, between December 2001 and April 2002. Since then he has performed five missions to the ISS, carried out 7 spacewalks that in total lasted more than 44 hours. And, in June of this year, it exceeded a thousand days in space. Currently, he has spent more than 1,111 days off the planet, making him the “most extraterrestrial” human being in history.
“I don’t feel deprived or isolated up there – explains Kononenko in an interview -. Only upon returning home do I realize that for hundreds of days, In my absence, the children have been growing up without a dad”.
Kononenko also explains that Since his first missions, times have changed a lot and now they can make video calls and send and receive messages to stay in touch with your family, but preparing for each new space flight has become increasingly difficult due to technological advances.
“The cosmonaut profession is becoming more complicated. Systems and experiments are becoming more complicated. I repeat, preparation has not become easier,” adds the Russian cosmonaut.
Does that mean that you will never make another flight? Kononenko has not confirmed whether there will be a next mission for who at the beginning of the year became the first human being to spend more than 900 days in space and, Due to problems with Boeing’s Starliner, he extended his stay by more than 200 days.
Despite his age, extending the record is not at all ruled out: the oldest astronaut to have carried out a mission (we speakof professionals) It was John Glenn, 77 years oldwhich means that Kononenko still has plenty of time to set new records.