KOROLYOV /Moscow Region/, September 23. /TASS/. Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolay Chub and Oleg Kononenko, TASS’ special correspondent on the International Space Station (ISS), along with NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, have left the landing module of the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft in the Kazakh Steppe, a TASS correspondent reported from the Mission Control Center.
The module has made a vertical landing.
Kononenko and Chub arrived on the ISS onboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft on September 15, 2023. Their mission was the longest in ISS history, lasting over 374 days by the time of the landing. Dyson arrived on the ISS in March and spent slightly less than six months onboard.
Valery Polyakov and Sergey Avdeev were the only cosmonauts to spend more time in orbit within the framework of the same expedition on the Mir space station. Polyakov spent 437 days in space in 1994-1995 and Avdeev - 379 days in 1998-1999.
In addition to the record-long space mission, TASS special correspondent on the ISS Kononenko set a number of individual records for time spent in space. On February 4, he became the all-time record holder in terms of total time spent in orbit, passing fellow Russian Gennady Padalka; in June, he became the first human to spend 1,000 days in space, the same month he celebrated his 60th birthday. Upon his return to Earth, Kononenko’s total flight time amounted to 1,111 days.
Over the past year, the ISS has changed its orbit 16 times using the engines of Russian spacecraft. Additionally, Kononenko and Chub carried out two spacewalks. The crew of the ISS greeted 14 spacecraft during the course of the mission.