Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko continues to cement 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.
The milestone comes on the heels of his fifth space flight and during his third term as ISS commander. Back in February, Kononenko broke the cumulative record in space of 878 days previously held by former cosmonaut Gennady Padalka.
Its final trip to the orbiting laboratory began with a launch aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft on September 15, 2023, alongside astronaut Nikolai Chubb and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. It is due to return with Chubb 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), which is led by Baylor College of Medicine. He was recently selected 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 kind of person to be able to achieve that kind of record,” Urquieta said. “It’s a long time, but I think it’s one of those data points that hopefully we’ll start getting more of in the future.”
Urquieta is involved in research on a number of astronauts who have traveled to low Earth orbit for varying periods of time, including the first all-civilian mission, called Inspiration4, in 2021. He identified five main areas of research that he and his colleagues are advancing as a word to better understand long-duration spaceflight:
- Long distance communication from Earth
- Exposure to radiation
- Isolation and isolation
- Altered gravitational fields (ie being in a zero-g environment)
- Living in a hostile and closed environment
He said Kononenko provides a unique opportunity to better understand the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body.
“Although people might ask, ‘Okay, well, it’s not one mission, is it?’ There were many missions that made it 1000 days? Well, in this case, however, it’s extremely relevant for us to understand how multiple spaceflight exposures have impacted, to what extent, at different physiological levels,” Urquieta said.
“I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of research in the future when he comes back to Earth, and I’m sure there’s going to be a very long follow-up with him, you know, days and months and years after that, to try to really understand these very unique data points.”
With an eye toward long-duration missions to the lunar surface in the 1930s and expeditions to Mars down the road, Urquieta said it’s important to learn as much as possible about things like radiation exposure, eye health, bone loss and space motion sickness.
He said much of that training comes from the six-month crew rotation missions aboard the ISS.
“When you extrapolate the data that we have from six-month missions to 900 days, there’s still a huge gap of data that we need to fill, that we need to get before we can safely say that, well, we have enough data that we can confidently say we can send someone to Mars and make sure that person comes back as healthy as they left Earth,” Urquieta said.
An unbeaten record
After Kononenko, the next most experienced 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 logged more than 675 days in orbit, including her first mission as private commander of Ax-2 in 2023.
The active NASA astronaut who comes closest to Kononenko’s record is Marc Vande Hey, who spent a total of more than 523 days in orbit during two separate missions.
Currently, NASA is not planning missions to the ISS for more than about six months. The agency uses the SpaceX Crew Dragon to ferry its astronauts into space for these long-duration missions before handing off their on-orbit duties to the following crew. The agency plans to use Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to do the same once it is certified after the crew’s flight test.
The most recent instance of a NASA astronaut spending a continuous year in space was Frank Rubio’s first trip into orbit. His 370 days in orbit were unplanned due to a problem with the Soyuz vehicle, which was deemed unsafe to return him and his Russian colleagues 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 the six-month missions are still valuable as the Artemis program prepares to send humans back to the moon for increasingly longer stays.
“These late Artemis missions will be longer, and these will be a testing ground for Mars. So I expect that these late Artemis missions will increase in duration, perhaps to the extent of greater than a year,” Urquieta said. “But for the Moon, I think the six-month ISS missions still provide valuable and reliable information to continue to inform decisions about lunar landings or lunar exploration-type missions.”
And even if Kononenko’s massive record stands for years to come, Urquieta said the more we learn about the human body in space, the better we can treat older people here on Earth and various types of diseases. Not only that, but he said that working more with space medicine could offer better solutions when it comes to healthcare for those in homes and communities that are far from hospitals or clinics.
“Even still here in the U.S., there are many populations that are 100 miles from the nearest hospital and from the nearest pharmacy,” Urquieta said. “Imagine that ability to not have to see a doctor and still be able to get some initial medical support to make decisions and start treatment.”
“I think it’s going to be extremely, extremely relevant to underserved and isolated populations, not just in the U.S., but really around the world.”
