An astronaut breaks NASA’s record for time spent in space – DW – 09/11/2023

American of Salvadoran origin Frank Rubio Today, Monday (11/09/2023), the International Space Station exceeded the record of 355 consecutive days and 3 hours and 45 minutes of staying in space, thus achieving a new record for an astronaut. US Space Agency (a pot).

This record is maintained by Mark Vande Hey From March 30, 2022.

Meanwhile, the longest human stay in space is that of cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who spent 437 days aboard the Mir station between 1994 and 1995.

Seven people spent more than a year in space

Rubio, 47, is scheduled to return to Earth on September 27, so he will soon be the first American and one of only seven people to spend a year or more in space, with a stay of 371 days.

“It’s a huge honor to be one of the people who will spend the longest time in space,” Rubio said in a recent interview with ABC.

Rubio made his first mission to the International Space Station on September 21, 2022 aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, and he and his crewmates, astronauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petlin, were scheduled to return to Earth after six months in orbit.

An unexpected turn

But last December, as Prokopyev and Petilin were preparing for a mission outside the International Space Station, Russian mission controllers determined that the Soyuz spacecraft’s external cooling system was losing pressure, and the station’s cameras confirmed an ammonia leak.

Technicians determined that Soyuz MS-22 It was not safe to return to Earth On February 23, they launched the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, and the stay of the three crew members was extended for another 180 days.

Russia returned the damaged Soyuz MS-22 on an independent mission last March.

Pilot, doctor and now astronaut

Rubio was born in Los Angeles and his wife, Deborah, has four children. During his childhood, the Latino lived in El Salvador and after his family moved to Miami (Florida) he studied at Miami Sunset High School.

The Spaniard reached the rank of second lieutenant in the United States Army where he was a helicopter pilot, with more than 1,100 flight hours, including 600 combat hours during operations in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The astronaut graduated as a doctor from the Military Services University of Health Sciences, and in 2017 he was selected to begin his two-year training as an astronaut.

Origin (EFE, space)