A 59 year old Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko has set a world record on Sunday for total time spent in space.
Oleg Kononenko overtook the record set by his compatriot Gennady Padalka, according to Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos. Padalka logged 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds during five space flights before retiring in 2017
Mr Kononenko broke the record at 0830 GMT (7:30pm AEDT), Roscosmos said.
He is expected to reach a total of 1,000 days in space on June 5, and by late September he will have clocked 1,110 days.
“I fly into space to do my favourite thing, not to set records,” Mr Kononenko told the TASS news agency in an interview from the International Space Station (ISS), where he is orbiting about 423 kilometres from Earth.
“I am proud of all my achievements, but I am more proud that the record for the total duration of human stay in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut.” He said.
His current space flight is scheduled to end in late September, by which time he will have logged 1,110 days in space.
The Soviet Union spooked the West in the early years of the space race by being the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth (Sputnik 1) in 1957, and then Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.
