Oleg Kononenko spent more than 878 days and 12 hours in space, beating the record previously held by his compatriot Gennady Padalka, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
A real feat, technical but above all human. Oleg Kononenko has been circling the Earth aboard the International Space Station for more than 878 days.
The cosmonaut left the ground on September 15, 2023 to join the ISS a few hours later, 400 km from our planet. This is the fifth mission of this type for this 59-year-old Russian.
Speaking to the Russian news agency TASS, the engineer said that each trip to the Station required careful preparation due to the station’s constant improvements, but that life as a cosmonaut was a childhood dream come true .
“I fly into space to do what I love, not to set records. I have dreamed and aspired to become a cosmonaut since I was a child. This interest, the possibility of flying in space, of living and working in orbit, motivates me to keep flying,” he said.
At the end of his current mission, Oleg Kononenko should break a second record since he will become the first human to have accumulated 1000 days in space.
The ISS is one of the few areas in which the United States and Russia still cooperate closely despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Roscosmos announced in December that its flight program with NASA to the space station had been extended until 2025.