Frank Rubio, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut, is smiling in a laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS). Provided by NASA
The American astronaut who has spent the longest time in space returns to Earth next week. Frank Rubio, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut, returns to Earth on the 27th (local time) after completing a 371-day space trip.
Astronaut Rubio headed to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Russia’s Soyuz ‘MS-22’ spacecraft on September 21 last year. Initially, astronaut Rubio was scheduled to return to Earth in March of this year, but an accident occurred where coolant leaked from the MS-22 spacecraft docked at the ISS. Coolant plays a role in regulating the spacecraft’s temperature and maintaining pressure.
The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), which developed the MS-22, judged it to be dangerous for astronauts to board, so it returned MS-22 to Earth and launched the MS-23 spacecraft to carry astronauts. In the process, astronaut Rubio’s return was postponed from March to September.
With this return, astronaut Rubio set the record for the longest stay on the ISS among Americans.
In Russia, there is also a person who stayed in space longer than that. This is the late Valery Polyakov, who stayed on the Mir International Space Station in Russia (former Soviet Union) for 437 days from January 1994 to March 1995. At that time, it was a politically and economically unstable time with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of Russia, so spacecraft could not be launched frequently to return astronauts. Due to this situation, Polyakov stayed in space for more than 400 days and left many traces in studying changes in the human body in a space environment with low gravity.
“During my stay, there were 25 astronauts,” Rubio recalled in a phone call with retired NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hey after 355 days on the ISS. “They were all special people, and the experience was quite amazing.” did.
Reporter Choi Ji-won [email protected]
