MOSCOW, May 29. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, who will go to the ISS in September 2023 on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft, will there for a year, which will allow Kononenko to become the first person in history to spend more than 1,000 days in orbit, the Roscosmos press service told reporters.
«»The main crew of the 70th and 71st long-term expeditions includes Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, as well as NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara. They will go to the ISS in September 2023 on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft
It is noted that according to the approved plan, O'Hara will return to Earth on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft in March 2024, while Kononenko and Chub will remain at the station until September 2024 and land
«Thus, Kononenko and Chubu will have to perform a year-long flight to the ISS,» Roscosmos said.
The composition of the crews for training for flights to the International Space Station in the fall of 2023 and in the spring of 2024 was determined by the interdepartmental commission at Roscosmos.
Kononenko has already made four space flights with a total duration of more than 736 days. Even if Kononenko went on a standard semi-annual flight, he would break the record for the total time spent in space (belongs to Gennady Padalka — more than 878 days). Now he has to become the first earthling who has been in orbit for more than a thousand days.
In total, during the existence of the ISS, three annual expeditions took place on it. The first was organized in 2015-2016, when Russian Mikhail Kornienko and American Scott Kelly spent 340 days at the station. The second time was not entirely planned. Russian cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov and American astronaut Mark Vande Hei stayed at the station for 355 days, because the «movie crew» returned on the ship on which they arrived at the station: actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko, who spent 12 days at the station. Dubrov and Vande Hay returned in March 2022 on the ship that Shipenko and Peresild had flown in.
The third annual expedition is underway now. Its participants, Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin and American astronaut Frank Rubio, ended up at the station on September 21, 2022. On December 15, the cooling system of their Soyuz MS-22 became unusable after a micrometeorite hit it. For safety, the ship was lowered in unmanned mode, and Soyuz MS-23 was sent to replace it. In order for the new ship to fully work out its resource, the expedition was extended for a year. It is expected that Prokopiev, Petelin and Rubio will spend more than 370 days on the ISS.