Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko continues to carve out his place in the annals of space history with his historic mission aboard the International Space Station. On Wednesday, he became the first person to reach 1,000 cumulative days in space.
This milestone comes during his fifth flight to space and his third stint as commander of the ISS. Last February, Kononenko broke the cumulative space record of 878 days, previously held by former cosmonaut Gennady Padalka.
His final journey to the orbiting laboratory began with a launch aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft on September 15, 2023, alongside cosmonaut Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. He is expected to return with Chub and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson in September 2024.
Spaceflight Now spoke with Emmanuel Urquieta, former chief medical officer of the NASA-funded Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), led by Baylor College of Medicine. He was recently hired by the University of Central Florida (UCF) to serve as vice chair of aerospace medicine in its department of internal medicine.
“It takes a special type of person to be able to achieve a record like that,” Urquieta said. “It’s been a long time coming, but I think it’s one of those data points that I hope we start getting more of in the future.”
Urquieta has participated in research involving a number of astronauts who have traveled to low Earth orbit for varying lengths of time, including the first all-civilian mission, called Inspiration4, in 2021. He highlighted five main areas of research that he and his colleagues improve. to better understand long-duration spaceflight:
- Long distance communication from Earth
- Radiation Exposure
- Isolation and confinement
- Altered gravity fields (i.e. being in a zero g environment)
- Living in a hostile and closed environment
He said Kononenko offers a unique opportunity to deepen our understanding of the impacts of long-duration spaceflight on the human body.
“Even though people might be like, ‘Okay, well, it’s not just one mission, is it? There were several missions that lasted 1,000 days? Well, still in this case, it is extremely relevant for us to understand how the multiple exposures to spaceflight have had impacts, to what extent, on the different physiological levels,” Urquieta said.
“I’m sure there will be a lot of research to do in the future when he returns to Earth and I’m sure there will be a very long follow-up with him, you know, days and months and years afterwards, to really try to understand these very unique data points.
With an eye toward long-duration missions to the Moon’s surface in the 2030s and expeditions to Mars later, Urquieta said it’s important to learn as much as possible about topics such as exposure to radiation, eye health, bone loss and spatial movement. disease.
He said much of that learning came from crews’ six-month rotational missions aboard the ISS.
“When you extrapolate the data that we have from six-month missions to 900 days, there’s still a huge data gap that we need to fill, that we need to get to be able to safely say that, okay, we have enough data .that we can confidently say that we are capable of sending someone to Mars and ensuring that that person returns as healthy as they left Earth,” Urquieta said.
Unmatched record
After Kononenko, the second most experienced female aviator, who is also currently eligible for future missions, is former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. She currently works as a private astronaut at Houston-based Axiom Space and has spent more than 675 days in orbit, including her first mission as private Ax-2 commander in 2023.
The active-duty NASA astronaut who comes closest to Kononenko’s record is Mark Vande Hei, who spent a total of more than 523 days in orbit during two separate missions.
Currently, NASA does not plan missions to the ISS lasting more than about six months. The agency uses the SpaceX Crew Dragon to transport its astronauts into space for these long-duration missions before handing off in-orbit tasks to the next crew. The agency plans to use Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to do the same, once it is certified following the crewed flight test.
The most recent example of a NASA astronaut spending a continuous year in space is Frank Rubio’s first trip to orbit. His 370 days in orbit were unplanned due to a problem with the Soyuz vehicle that was deemed unsafe for him and his Russian colleagues to return to Earth.
Urquieta said he would like to see more one-year missions planned as time passes and NASA gets closer to sending humans to Mars. But he said six-month missions remain useful as the Artemis program prepares to send humans back to the Moon for longer and longer stays.
“These latest Artemis missions will last longer and these will serve as a test bed for Mars. So I expect the duration of these latest Artemis missions to increase, perhaps to exceed a year,” Urquieta said. “But for the Moon, I think six-month missions to the ISS still provide valuable and reliable information to continue to inform decisions about lunar landing or lunar exploration missions.”
And even if Kononenko’s record endures for years to come, Urquieta said the more we learn about the human body in space, the better we can treat elderly humans here on Earth and different types of illnesses. Not only that, but he added that working more with medicine in space can offer better healthcare solutions for people living in homes and communities far from hospitals or clinics.
“Even here in the United States, many populations are 100 miles from the nearest hospital and pharmacy,” Urquieta said. “Imagine this possibility of not having to see a doctor and you can still benefit from initial medical decision support and initiate treatment.”
“I think this will be extremely, extremely relevant to underserved and isolated populations, not only in the United States, but throughout the rest of the world.”
