As of: February 6, 2024, 11:12 a.m
By: Tanja Banner
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No man has left the earth for a longer period of time than the Russian Oleg Kononenko.
NASA can't keep up - for a specific reason.
Munich - The Russian Oleg Kononenko has been on board the International Space Station ISS since mid-September - and has just broken a record.
Since Sunday (February 4th), the cosmonaut has been the person who has spent the longest time in space.
At this point, there were just over 878 days with five stays on the ISS - and the trend continues to rise.
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko is currently on the International Space Station for the fifth time and has broken a record: with more than 878 days, he is the person with the longest stay in space.
(Archive image) © Yuri Kochetkov/dpa
No one has been in space as long as Oleg Kononenko
Previously, the world record for the longest stay in space was held by another Russian: cosmonaut Gennadi Padalka was in space for 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds over the course of his career before retiring in 2017.
Kononenko broke this record at an altitude of 423 kilometers above the Earth.
He told the Russian state news agency
Tass
: "I'm going into space to do what I love, not to break records."
People with the longest stays in space |
|
|---|---|
Oleg Kononenko |
880 days (as of February 6, 2024) |
Gennady Padalka |
878 days |
Yuri Malenchenko |
827 days |
Sergei Krikalev |
803 days |
Aleksandr Kaleri |
769 days |
Sergei Avdeyev |
747 days |
Anton Shkaplerov |
709 days |
Valery Polyakov |
678 days |
Peggy Whitson |
675 days |
Fyodor Yurchikhin |
672 days |
Cosmonaut will be in space for 1,100 days in September
Kononenko is scheduled to stay on the ISS until the end of September - by then he will have spent a full 1,100 days in space.
“I am proud of all my achievements, but I am even prouder that the record for the total length of human stay in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut,” Kononenko told
Tass
.
Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko is being prepared for a flight into space in 2015.
(Archive image) © Yuri Kochetkov/dpa
The fact that the record is held by a Russian also has to do with the fact that the US space agency NASA has stricter limits that determine how much space radiation an astronaut can be exposed to over the course of their career.
The concern: Too much space radiation can cause cancer in astronauts.
The US world record holder is astronaut Peggy Whitson, who crossed the limit after 655 days in space and retired from NASA.
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Radiation limit in space
The US space organization NASA has been discussing a higher radiation limit for its astronauts for some time.
In the future, 600 millisieverts could apply to the entire career of a US astronaut - regardless of age and gender.
So far, a distinction has been made according to age and gender.
According to information from Space News,
the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the European Space Agency Esa have
a radiation limit of 1,000 millisieverts; in Japan there is an age- and gender-dependent limit of 500 to 1,000 millisieverts.
On Earth, people are exposed to natural radiation of two to three millisieverts per year.
On the ISS it is around 300 millisieverts per year.
NASA is more cautious about space radiation
However, the advent of private space travel made it possible for Whitson to still fly into space again - a private space mission increased her space days to 675, with more to come.
However, on the list of people who have spent the most time in space, Whitson is only in ninth place - the eight places ahead of her are all occupied by Russian cosmonauts, as is place 10.
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