Most time in space

How it was measured

Most time in space counts the total days a person has spent in orbit across all missions, not one continuous stay. Kononenko reached 1,110 days, 14 hours, 57 minutes on September 23, 2024, when he returned to Earth after a 374-day mission aboard the International Space Station. He landed in Kazakhstan with Nikolai Chub and Tracy Caldwell Dyson, about 3.5 hours after undocking from the station.

About Oleg Kononenko

Oleg Kononenko is a Russian cosmonaut born in 1964 in what is now Türkmenabat, Turkmenistan. He trained as a mechanical engineer and worked on spacecraft power systems before becoming a cosmonaut candidate in 1996. He first flew to the station in 2008, and he has made five long-duration missions there, commanding several crews. He has also completed seven spacewalks. He has said he flies to do his favorite work rather than to set records, yet his total now exceeds that of every other person in history.

The record it replaced

Gennady Padalka held the record at 878 days until Kononenko passed him on February 4, 2024. Padalka built that total on missions to both Mir and the station. The next ten people on the list are inactive or no longer living, and the closest active name is Sergey Prokopyev with 567 non-consecutive days. NASA does not usually let its astronauts stay in orbit as long as Russian cosmonauts do, so the total may stand for many years. Valeri Polyakov still holds the longest single stay, at 437 days, which is a separate record.