As it prepares its next rocket for the first crewed mission to the Moon this millennium, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) achieved another milestone earlier today after NASA astronaut Frank Rubio set a new record for the most time in space spent by an American. Rubio landed on Earth early morning Eastern time today in Kazakhstan after spending more than a year in space. His time at the International Space Station (ISS) was quite eventful as well, since it saw astronauts on the station deal with several emergencies, including leaks on a Soyuz spacecraft.
NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio Spends 371 Days In Space After Spacecraft Problems Delayed His Return
Astronaut Rubio's time spent on the ISS wasn't meant to be a record. He went to the station on the Soyuz MS-22 in September last year, and the mission was initially planned to be the standard duration of six months. However, in December, coolant from the ship that was docked to the ISS began to leak, with the Russian space agency Roscosmos ascribing the leak to micro-meteorite impacts. The leak caused temperatures on the ship to soar within a month after the leak, but they stabilized soon afterward.
As an emergency measure, NASA transformed SpaceX's Crew Dragon into a lifeboat for Rubio in case of any mishap on the ISS. The Crew Dragon, which can hold 7 astronauts when it is at full capacity, saw crew on the ISS remove a strap from the Cargo Dragon also docked to the station and strap Rubio in the Crew Dragon. Seat liners from the Soyuz were also used on the Dragon, making it the first time that this equipment from a Russian crew vehicle had been used on SpaceX's spaceship.
The 371 days that Rubio has spent on the station have also seen him experience spaceflight in a way that few humans have had the chance to. According to NASA, Rubio has orbited Earth close to six thousand times (5,936 orbits to be exact), a whopping 157,412,306 miles of total travel and seen 15 spacecraft visit the station. Activity on the ISS has increased since SpaceX started regularly flying the Crew and Cargo Dragon, with the rapid cadence often leading to a Crew Dragon and a Cargo Dragon often being locked to the station at the same time.
Other spacecraft that have visited the ISS during Rubio's mission include six crew and cargo ships from the Roscosmos and two cargo spacecraft operated by Northrop Grumman. Along with Rubio, his Russian cosmonaut partners Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin also made it back to Earth since they had flown with him to the station on the MS-22. Within the trio, Prokopyev is the most experienced astronaut since he flew to space on the Soyuz MS-09 mission in 2018 to mark his first flight and spend 197 days in space.
The two cosmonauts and Rubio undocked from the ISS at 3:54 a.m. Eastern time, which marked the start of Expedition 70 on the station. Right now, NASA astronauts Loral O'Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli, the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Konstantin Borisov and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa are on the ISS, with Mogensen being the commander of Expedition 70.
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