Commander of the cosmonaut detachment of Roscosmos, special correspondent of TASS of the International Space Station (ISS) Oleg Kononenko became the first person in the world to spend a total of one thousand days in low Earth orbit, Roscosmos announced.
The commander of the cosmonaut team is making the fifth space flight in his career. On February 4, he broke the record of Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who spent a total of 878 days 11 hours 29 minutes 48 seconds in space in five missions (from 1998 to 2015). In June, it will celebrate its 60th anniversary in space, and at the end of the one-year expedition, its total flight time will be 1,110 days.
Oleg Kononenko was born on June 21, 1964 in Chardzow, Turkmen SSR (now Turkmenabat, Turkmenistan). He made his first space flight in April 2008, going to the ISS on the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft. Upon returning from his first expedition to the station, the cosmonaut was awarded the titles of Hero of the Russian Federation and Pilot-Cosmonaut of the Russian Federation.