Astronaut holds record for longest stay in space returns to Earth

The Russian Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft carrying Tracy C. Dyson, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will separate from the International Space Station (ISS) at 3:37 p.m. on September 23, Hanoi time, and land on the steppe of Kazakhstan about 3.5 hours later. The flight will take place after the ISS command transfer ceremony, ending the Expedition 71 mission and starting the Expedition 72 mission, according to Space.

According to NASA, the hatch between the MS-25 and the ISS will close, preparing for the separation operation. Then, the Soyuz will fire its engines to lower its altitude, re-enter the atmosphere and land. If all goes according to plan, the landing will take place at 7 p.m. on September 23, in the town of Dzhezkazgan southeast of Dzhezkazgan.

Kononenko, commander of Expedition 71, will hand over the keys to the ISS to NASA astronaut Suni Williams. Suni and her colleague Butch Wilmore flew aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule in June for a scheduled one-week stay, but they will continue to live on the ISS until February 2025 after the Starliner encountered multiple problems and returned to Earth without a crew.

Kononenko and Chub spent 374 days aboard the ISS, a new record for a single mission to the station, according to Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. The previous record of 371 days was held by NASA cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and Frank Rubio, who lived on the ISS from September 2022 to September 2023. Kononenko currently holds the record for total time spent in space. When his current mission ends, he will have spent 1,111 days in orbit, according to NASA.

An Khang (Theo Space)