2023-09-27 13:04:00
They spent a year in space, in a bubble where the war in Ukraine did not affect relations between Russia and the United States. American astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitri Petelin returned to dry land six months late. Their Soyuz MS-23 capsule detached from the International Space Station (ISS) a minute earlier than expected; after three and a half hours of flight, it landed as expected at 5:17 p.m. (1:17 p.m. French time) in the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the town of Jezkazgan.
“The crew feels good,” the Moscow control center said as the capsule parachuted down and landed in a cloud of dust. “The landing has taken place. » “The crew returned to Earth after a year on the ISS,” Roscosmos, the Russian space company, said after the landing.
Record for longest continuous spaceflight by an American
Rubio, 47, broke the record for the longest continuous spaceflight by an American. Departing on September 21, 2022, the three men spent 371 days in orbit, twice as long as expected, because their original spacecraft leaked. The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, docked at the ISS, suffered a spectacular leak, due, according to Moscow, to the impact of a micrometeorite. The Russian agency brought back this vessel, and sent another, empty. Rubio, Prokopiev and Peteline carried out the mission of this crew which did not come.
Son of Salvadoran immigrants, born in Los Angeles, Francisco “Frank” Rubio, is a doctor who became an air force surgeon. A former US Army Special Forces officer, he is also a Blackhawk helicopter pilot and has flown combat missions in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Speaking to reporters from orbit eight days before his return to Earth, Rubio acknowledged that he probably would have declined that first spaceflight if he had known he was going away for a year. Married and father of four children, he expressed his impatience to reunite with his family. It will likely take months for him to regain his balance after a prolonged stay in microgravity and was looking forward to spending time in his garden, so quiet compared to the constant hum of machines aboard the ISS.
VIDEO. ISS: a rescue ship sent to bring three crew members back to Earth
Although Rubio broke the American record, he and his Russian colleagues fell far short of the world record held by Russian Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 consecutive days and 18 hours on a Mir space station mission between January 1994 and March 1995. Polyakov died last September at the age of 80. According to Roscosmos, Sergei Prokopiev spent, during all his space travels, more than 567 days outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
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