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A Russian cosmonaut set a world record for the most time spent in space on Sunday, February 4, 2024, after spending more than 878 days, or almost two and a half years. As of 08:30 GMT, Oleg Kononenko has overtaken the record of his compatriot Gennady Padalka, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Padalka completed five space flights in 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds before retiring in 2017. Kononenko, who is 59 years old, broke the record when he flew 423 km from Earth during his fifth space flight.
“I fly into space to do my favorite thing, not to set records,” he told state news agency Tass in an interview from the International Space Station (ISS). “I am proud of all my achievements, but I am most proud that the record for the total duration of a human stay in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut,” said Kononenko, who is the commander of Roscosmos. His current space flight ends at the end of September, when he will have spent 1,110 days in space. According to the European Space Agency ESA, he began his career in space as an engineer and began training to become a cosmonaut at the age of 34 after joining the group selected for the ISS program. His first space flight took place shortly afterwards, in April 2008, and lasted 200 days.
Kononenko told Tass that video calls and messages allowed him to stay in touch, but it wasn’t until he returned to Earth that he realized how much of life he had missed. “It is only when I return home that I realize that for hundreds of days in my absence the children grew up without a father,” he said. “No one will give me this time back.” He also said he exercised regularly to counteract the physical effects of the “treacherous” weightlessness. “I don’t feel deprived or isolated,” he said. His five space flights have lasted 16 years, and in that time advances in technology have made preparing for each flight more difficult, he said. “The cosmonaut profession is becoming more and more complex. The systems and experiments are becoming more complex. I repeat, the preparation has not become easier.”
Soviet and Russian cosmonauts dominate the space flight record book. For example, they have the top eight spots on the most-time-in-space list. Peggy Whitson, whose 675 Earth days are the most for a NASA astronaut, is at number nine. And cosmonaut Valery Polyakov holds the record for the duration of a single flight. He spent nearly 438 consecutive days aboard the Russian space station Mir from January 1994 to March 1995. The ISS is one of the few international projects where Washington and Moscow have continued to work closely together since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Roscosmos said in December that a program with NASA had been extended until 2025. The reliability of Russia’s space program, historically the country’s pride, has been heavily questioned in recent years. The Russian segment of the ISS leaked coolant for the third time in less than a year in October, highlighting what analysts have described as a beleaguered space sector struggling to right itself after years of funding shortfalls, failures and corruption scandals.
2024-02-11 08:21:17
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