Astronaut Frank Rubio, pressured to spend an additional six months aboard the World House Station as a result of bother along with his Russian journey house, set a brand new U.S. single-flight staying power report Monday, transferring previous Mark Vande Hei’s 355 days off planet.
Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin plan to go back to Earth aboard a alternative Soyuz ferry send on September 27 to near out a marathon 371-day keep in house — the primary flight longer than a complete 12 months through an American astronaut.
Introduced ultimate September 21, Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio firstly deliberate to come back house in March, however their Soyuz MS-22 ferry send suffered a large coolant leak in December, possibly because of a micrometeoroid affect.
NASA
After an intensive research, the Russians concluded cabin temperatures most probably may just exceed protection limits right through re-entry. In order that they opted to release an unpiloted alternative Soyuz in February that performed a a success computerized rendezvous and docking.
To be able to put the Russian crew-rotation time table again on course, Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio, a married father of 4, had been pressured to increase their keep aboard the distance station through an extra six months.
“On a private degree, it was once lovely tricky, simply because I used to be lacking my circle of relatives and I knew I used to be going to omit some lovely giant milestones, for my children, particularly,” Rubio mentioned in an previous interview with The Related Press.
“Birthdays, anniversaries, my son’s going to move off to university this 12 months, my oldest daughter is completing up her first 12 months of school,” he added. “We now have attempted in reality exhausting to stick in contact with one some other. … My spouse, my children, they have got been soldiers, and they have got in reality treated it extremely neatly.
“And the way neatly they have got treated it has made it more straightforward for me to only focal point on paintings and make do with the hand now we have been dealt.”
NASA
On Monday, at 1:40 p.m. EDT, Rubio’s time aloft moved previous Vande Hei’s earlier report of 355 days 3 hours and 45 mins, set on the conclusion of an area station project that started on April 9, 2021, and ended with touchdown in Kazakhstan on March 30, 2022. At landing September 27, Rubio could have logged 370 days and 21 hours clear of Earth.
“Frank idea when he flew to house, he can be right here for 6 months,” astronaut Woody Hoburg mentioned sooner than returning to Earth after his personal six-month project. “And partway via his project, he discovered that it was once prolonged to a 12 months.
“His management up right here has been improbable. He is been superb to paintings with. And Frank is simply making an enormous sacrifice, being clear of his circle of relatives for goodbye, and I simply need to in reality acknowledge the provider he is given to us aboard the distance station.”
The overdue cosmonaut Valery Polyakov holds the arena report for the longest unmarried spaceflight ‚ 437 days and 18 hours — a mark set aboard the Russian Mir house station in 1994-95. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly was once the primary American to log just about a 12 months in house (340 days), adopted through Vande Hei (355 days), Christina Koch (329 days) and now Rubio (371 days).
Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin might be changed through a contemporary Soyuz team — Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara — scheduled for release Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Kononenko and Chub additionally plan to spend a complete 12 months aboard the station. Subsequent March, some other Soyuz will blast off wearing veteran commander Oleg Novitskiy, NASA’s Tracy Dyson and Belarus researcher Marina Vasilevskaya.
Novitskiy, Vasilevskaya and O’Hara will go back to Earth about 10 days later. Kononenko, Chub and Dyson will stay in orbit till subsequent September. On the conclusion of that year-long project, Kononenko could have logged greater than 1,000 days in house — some other report — over 5 flights.