Important trips
Although NASA is very good at publicizing its achievements and in many cases leads space exploration, when it comes to staying in space, astronauts Russian astronauts defeated them.
In September 2023, Frank Rubio returned to Earth after 371 consecutive days in space, in the context of a prolonged stay in orbit because the ship bringing him back was damaged.
became the first person in history to have a total flight time in space of 1,000 days and nights.
Rubio is the American with the longest orbital trip but still far behind Valeri Polikov, another Russian who stayed at the MIR station (or Hoa Binh space station) for 437 days, during 1994-1995.
Polikov holds the record for the longest consecutive stay in space. This is long enough to complete a round trip to Mars. Polikov said that during his time away from family or friends, he felt depressed at the beginning and at the end of the mission.
The long stays of Russian cosmonauts were important to control the psychological aspects of long-term trips. Polikov, who died in 2022, was a physician and studied the effects of space on human physiology.
A major consequence of being away from Earth’s surface for too long is loss of muscle mass, a loss of more than 1% of bone minerals for each month spent in space. Upon return to Earth, specialized recovery work is necessary and may take years to complete.
In addition to an increased risk of bone fractures, an increased risk of cancer due to exposure to cosmic radiation, and even erectile dysfunction problems have been discovered.
Information accumulated from Kononenko’s trips will be used to design strategies to alleviate the problems humans will encounter when establishing a permanent base on the Moon, or the first dream first set foot on Mars.