MOSCOW, April 11Almost all of the few cosmonauts who left the Russian cosmonaut team over the past three years did not leave of their own free will, but because they did not pass a medical examination, Oleg Kononenko, commander of the Russian cosmonaut corps, said on the eve of Cosmonautics Day.
«Only one cosmonaut (over the past three years, — ed.) decided to stop his activity on his own initiative. All the rest — for reasons related to medicine. Space flights do not add health. There are purposeful people in the detachment who love their profession «, Kononenko said in an interview.
The fact that so many experienced cosmonauts left the detachment cannot be called a trend, Kononenko believes. He added that in the last 20 years «it so happened» that an astronaut goes on his first flight only for 10-12 years in the detachment.
Last year, Alexander Skvortsov and Alexander Misurkin left the Russian cosmonaut corps, having made three flights to the International Space Station each. Mukhtar Aimakhanov also ended his career, enrolled in the detachment back in 2003, but never flew into space. Anton Shkaplerov, who made four space flights with a total duration of more than 700 days, left the detachment in March 2023. In 2021, three cosmonauts left the Russian detachment — Oleg Skripochka and Anatoly Ivanishin, who flew three times each, and Andrei Borisenko, who had two space flights in his career.
Now there are seven cosmonauts in the detachment who have made one flight each, two have been in space twice, and two have flown three times, as well as Kononenko himself, who is now preparing for the fifth flight. There are 27 people in the detachment, four of them are candidates for cosmonauts, who are still undergoing general space training.