Russian cosmonaut sets out-of-this-world record for stay in space

‘I am more proud that the record for total duration of stay in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut’ ‘I do not feel isolated. It is only [after], realisation comes my children have been growing up without me’

A RUSSIAN cosmonaut has set a world record for total time spent in space, surpassing the previous record which was also held by a Russian.

Yesterday, Oleg Kononenko surpassed the previous record of 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds in orbit – set by Gennady Padalka – at 11.30am Russian time (8.30am GMT), Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, announced.

The 59 year-old, who is on his fifth expedition to space, is expected to reach 1,000 days in space on Jun 5 and 1,110 days by late September. “I fly into space to do my favourite thing, not to set records,” Kononenko told Tass, the Russian news agency, in an interview from the International Space Station (ISS), where he is in an orbit about 263 miles from Earth.

“I am proud of all my achievements, but I am more proud that the record for the total duration of human stay in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut,” he said.

When it comes to space travel, Russians have a long history of achievement. As early as 1957, the Soviet Union spooked the West when they launched Sputnik 1, the first satellite to orbit the Earth. In 1961 it was a Soviet, cosmonaut

Yuri Gagarin, who became the human to leave the planet.

However, since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s space programme has struggled due to massive funding shortages and corruption.

Since Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia has repeatedly vowed to turn around the decline of its space programmes, though serious problems still remain, according to officials and space analysts.

Kononenko said that he worked out regularly to counter the physical effects of “insidious” weightlessness, but that it was on returning to Earth that the realisation came of how much life he had missed out on. “I do not feel deprived or isolated,” he said. “It is only upon returning home that the realisation comes that for hundreds of days in my absence the children have been growing up without a papa. No one will return this time to me.”

He added that cosmonauts could now use video calls and messaging to keep in touch with relatives, but preparing for each new space flight became more difficult due to technological advances.

“The profession of a cosmonaut is becoming more complicated. The systems and experiments are becoming more complicated,” he said.

Kononenko dreamed of going to space as a child and enrolled in an engineering institute. His first space flight was in 2008. His current trip to the ISS launched last year on a Soyuz MS-24.

The ISS is one of the few international projects on which the United States and Russia still cooperate closely. In December, Roscosmos said that a cross-flight programme with Nasa to the ISS had been extended until 2025.

Relations in other areas between the two countries have broken down since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, to which Washington responded by sending arms to Kyiv and imposing successive rounds of sanctions on Moscow.