Space travel
World record: Russian cosmonaut spent a total of 878 days on the ISS
Oleg Kononenko (center) is on the International Space Station (ISS) for the fifth time. photo
© Ivan Timoshenko/Roscosmos space corporation/AP/dpa
Apparently it’s bearable on the International Space Station: a Russian is now setting a world record.
Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko was on the space station on Sunday, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos ISS has set a world record with a total of more than 878 days in space so far. This will be the 59-year-old’s fifth stay on the ISS, Roscosmos announced.
Kononenko, who is the commander of cosmonauts at Roscosmos, surpassed the previous record of his colleague Gennady Padalka. By the end of his current stay on the ISS, scheduled until September 23, Kononenko’s cosmic account will have more than 1,000 days.
The astronaut flew to the ISS for the first time in 2008. Now he has been there again since mid-September – as part of the current 70th long-term expedition to humanity’s outpost at an altitude of around 400 kilometers.