KOROLYOV /Moscow Region/, September 23. /TASS/. Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolay Chub and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson returned to Earth after the longest mission ever spent on the International Space Station, according to a TASS reporter from the Mission Control Center.
Kononenko also served as a TASS special correspondent on board the orbital outpost.
The crew returned aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft, which landed southeast of the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan. Rescuers are now headed to the landing site to help the crew get out of the descent vehicle.
Kononenko and Chub arrived on the ISS aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft on September 15, 2023. Their mission has become the longest ever spent onboard the ISS, lasting more than 374 days by the time they landed. US national Dyson arrived to the ISS in March, so she spent just under a half year on the station.
Cosmonauts Valery Polyakov and Sergey Avdeyev stayed in orbit longer than Kononenko and Chub within one expedition, but that was aboard the Mir orbital outpost. Polyakov spent 437 days in orbit from 1994-1995, and Avdeyev 379 days from 1998-1999.
On February 4, Kononenko became the new champion in terms of total time spent in orbit, surpassing Russian Gennady Padalka. Upon his return to Earth, Kononenko's total flight time amounted to 1,111 days.
Since Kononenko and Chub arrived at the station, the orbit has been adjusted as many as 16 times using the engines of Russian spacecraft, and the cosmonauts have gone into open space twice. The ISS crew has received 14 spacecraft over that time.