Off on a one-year flight
Turkmenabat-born cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko will make the longest flight of his career. Kononenko and his crewmates will be launched into space on 15 September from the Baikonur centre in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle.
The spacecraft will deliver 4 crew members to the International Space Station for a long-duration mission. The crew is commanded by Oleg Kononenko, a native of Turkmenabat. The crew also includes Roscosmos cosmonaut Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara.
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will spend 1 year on the International Space Station and will return to Earth in September next year. For our fellow countryman Oleg Kononenko this is his 5th space voyage, and for Nikolai Chub his 1st. Loral O’Hara will spend half a year on the International Space Station and will return to Earth in March next year.
If this voyage is successfully completed, our fellow countryman Oleg Kononenko will go down in history as the Russian cosmonaut who has spent the longest time in space. This voyage will last 375 days, and taking all his voyages into account, the days he has spent in space will exceed 1,000.
Oleg Kononenko was born in 1964 in Turkmenabat city. He later worked at the aviation technical base of that city’s airport. For his services to Turkmenistan, he was awarded the title “Hero of Turkmenistan” and decorated with the “Altyn Ay” (“Golden Crescent”) medal and the “Star of the President” order.