Frank Rubio has broken the record for the longest US astronaut space mission with more than 355 days spent in low Earth orbit.
Rubio — who has been on the Worldwide Space Station since September 2022 — outmaneuvered the past record, held by resigned NASA space explorer Imprint Vande Hei, at 1:40 p.m. ET on Monday, as per a representative for the space office.
In addition, Rubio is on track to achieve yet another significant milestone in the coming weeks. He and his two fellow crewmates, cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, are unlikely to be brought back to Earth before September 27 by a Russian Soyuz capsule.
When Rubio completes his mission, he will have spent at least 371 days in space. He is close to becoming the first American to live in microgravity for more than a year.
However Rubio’s main goal was not initially intended to break records.
On September 21, 2022, Rubio and his crew believed they were embarking on a six-month mission aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. Yet, the space apparatus that conveyed Rubio and his two Russian partners got a coolant hole in December. Authorities at Roscosmos, Russia’s space office, later considered the space apparatus perilous to convey the team back home.
Instead, on March 28, the crew-less Soyuz MS-22 capsule landed back on Earth. MS-23, a replacement spacecraft launched by Roscosmos, also docked with the space station on February 25. Rubio’s get date was pushed once again to September as Russia arranged the following Soyuz vehicle, which will send off with another team of two cosmonauts and one NASA space traveler as soon as Friday.
On September 5, Rubio recorded a conversation with Vande Hei to commemorate his achievement. The footage is expected to be shown on NASA’s media channel on Tuesday at 11 a.m. Eastern Time.
“Rubio’s process in space epitomizes the substance of investigation,” NASA chairman Bill Nelson said in a Monday proclamation posted via web-based entertainment.
“As he breaks records as the longest serving @NASA US space traveler in space, he additionally prepares for people in the future of space travelers,” the assertion peruses. ” Frank, your devotion is truly extraordinary!
In the books If everything goes according to plan, Rubio’s 371-day stay will not set a new world record for the longest space mission. The late Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who logged 437 nonstop days in circle on board Russia’s Mir space station between January 1994 and Walk 1995, holds that title.
After NASA and Roscosmos decided to extend Vande Hei’s stay in 2022 because Russia had sent a crew of two people to the space station to film a movie, Vande Hei had set a new US record for the most consecutive days in space. Despite the fact that Vande Hei stated at the time that he was aware that his mission might be extended prior to his arrival, his return was postponed in order to accommodate the additional traffic to the orbiting laboratory.
Prior to Vande Hei, American astronaut Scott Kelly’s 340-day mission held the record for the longest American spaceflight. NASA planned this extended mission to investigate the long-term effects of spaceflight on the human body.
Additionally, the current record for the most consecutive days spent in space belongs to a Russian cosmonaut. Gennadi Padalka procured that title, outmaneuvering one more cosmonaut in 2015, by scoring a sum of 879 days throughout five separate spaceflights.
Peggy Whitson holds the US record for the most days spent in space, with 675 days in orbit. Whitson, who resigned from the NASA space explorer corps in 2018, has added to the record as of late as 2023. She is now a private astronaut for Axiom Space, which has hosted two commercial trips to the space station so far. These trips have given paying customers the opportunity to go to the space station with an experienced professional astronaut.
Getting to space
Rubio went to the space station on a Russian shuttle as a feature of group trading understanding among NASA and Roscosmos that was worked through in the late spring of 2022.
NASA authorities relegated Rubio to ride on board the Soyuz MS-22, while Roscosmos put cosmonaut Anna Kikina on a SpaceX Team Winged serpent mission that took off in October 2022 and got back Walk 11.
NASA has repeatedly stated that its partnership with Roscosmos is essential for continuing the operations of the space station and the valuable scientific research carried out on board, despite geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia as the war in Ukraine escalated.
NASA stated in a statement at the time the ride-sharing agreement was made that a deal like this with Russia was necessary to guarantee the space station’s “continued safe operations.” Assuming either the Russian Soyuz rocket or the SpaceX Group Mythical serpent container were to run into issues and be removed from administration, a seat-trade understanding would guarantee that the two US space explorers and Russian cosmonauts would in any case approach the space station.
However, officials noted that Roscosmos did not have to rely on a SpaceX capsule to replace the damaged Soyuz MS-22 crew ship because the MS-23 spacecraft was ready to fly and the coolant leak on the MS-22 vehicle did not necessarily point to potential issues with other Soyuz vehicles.
During a news conference in July, NASA’s International Space Station program manager Joel Montalbano stated that Roscosmos had investigated the issue and determined that the leak was likely caused by an “external force,” indicating that a piece of orbital debris likely struck the spacecraft.
“A NASA group has likewise taken a gander at it free of the Russian group and we likewise can’t track down anything — in view of the data we’ve been given by our Russian partners — of something besides some sort of outside power or trash or something different like that,” Montalbano said.
Rubio has witnessed a number of SpaceX crews rotate through the space station during his time there. Aside from the Saying 2 group that visited in May, the SpaceX Team 6 space explorers have gone back and forth since Rubio’s appearance. Also, the Team 7 gathering — which incorporates space explorers from NASA, Roscosmos, the Japan Aviation Investigation Organization and the European Space Office — showed up at the station in August.
