American Astronaut, Frank Rubio, Sets New Record for Longest Consecutive Space Flight with an Impressive 371 Days in Orbit

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio returned safely to Earth after breaking the record for the longest continuous mission ever undertaken by an American in space.

After spending 371 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and orbiting the Earth 5,936 times, Rubio arrived safely in Kazakhstan along with his two Russian crewmates Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.

Rubio also became the first American to spend an entire year in orbit, surpassing the previous American record set by Mark Vande Hei by two weeks.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the record-breaking voyage was not only a milestone but also an “important contribution to our understanding of long-duration space missions.”

‘NASA is immensely grateful for Frank’s dedicated service to our nation and the invaluable scientific contributions he made on the International Space Station. “He embodies the true pioneering spirit that will pave the way for future explorations to the Moon, Mars and beyond,” he said.

However, breaking records was not the original intention of Rubio’s first trip, as the mission was only planned to last six months.

Rubio and his crewmates had planned to return to Earth in March, but were trapped aboard the space station when their original spacecraft unexpectedly leaked coolant.

The culprit was later determined to have been a micrometeorite or piece of space debris that struck their Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft three months into the mission, making return to Earth unsafe.

Space debris is an increasingly dangerous problem as more satellites are launched, leaving clouds of cosmic debris that risk clogging near-Earth orbits.

Recent estimates suggest there could be more than 23,000 pieces of litter larger than 10cm, half a million pieces between 1 and 10cm and more than 100 million pieces of litter larger than 1mm.

In the time it took to organize a replacement crew and an alternative spacecraft, Rubio saw 15 visiting spacecraft and traveled more than 157 million miles (253 million kilometers), the equivalent of 328 trips to the Moon.

While Rubio has set the record for the longest American space flight, this was only the third-longest space flight in human history, with two Russian cosmonauts who lived aboard the Mir space station in the 1990s occupying the first places.

Valeri Polyakov holds the record for all-time longest space flight time after spending 437 days aboard the space station.

After spending 371 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and orbiting the Earth 5,936 times, Rubio arrived safely in Kazakhstan with his two Russian colleagues Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.

Rubio also became the first American to spend an entire year in orbit, surpassing the previous American record set by Mark Vande Hei by two weeks.

As part of a series of tests to determine the effects of microgravity on the body, Polyakov lived aboard the Mir space station between January 8, 1994 and March 22, 1995.

In a press conference from aboard the ISS, Rubio stated that if he had been asked to spend a year in space before starting training, he would most likely have said ‘thanks but no thanks’.

While Rubio set the record for the longest American space flight, this was only the third-longest space flight in human history.

As a father of four, he said he would have turned down the mission because of “family things that have been going on over the past year.”

Following post-landing medical checks, the crew will return to Karaganda, a large city in Kazakhstan, before boarding a NASA plane back to Houston.

When asked what he expected, Rubio said “hugging my wife and kids will be paramount, and I’ll probably focus on that for the first few days.”

He also said he was excited to enjoy the “trees and silence” of his garden at home after spending a year in the constant hum of the ISS’s life-support machinery.

Rubio was selected to be an astronaut in 2017 after earning a medical doctorate in 2010 and serving 600 combat hours as a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter pilot in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

As a trained doctor, Rubio is well aware of the long-term risks of spending more than a year in microgravity.

Spending long periods of time outside the pull of Earth’s gravity causes astronauts’ muscles and bones to weaken, leaving them unable to walk under their own power once they return to Earth.

The fluid in the inner ear responsible for helping us maintain balance also adapts to low gravity, so a return to Earth may mean “spending a lot of time sick.”

Rubio said it would take between two and six months for him to regain his strength, while his first few hours would likely involve making “a good friend with some medicine and some bags.”

Rubio and his crewmates will be replaced aboard the ISS by NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, as well as Roscomos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.

O’Hara is scheduled to return to Earth in March 2024, while the two cosmonauts will each spend a year aboard the station and return in September 2024.