Frank Rubio was supposed to spend just 6 months in space, not a year.
The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft launched to orbit on Sept. 21, 2022 carrying Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, for what was supposed to be a six-month mission. Halfway through their stay, on Dec. 14, the Soyuz rapidly lost all its coolant to space. Russian officials have said a micrometeoroid strike was likely to blame., consulting with NASA, discussed several options for bringing the crew home. Ultimately, the agencies decided to ship up a replacement Soyuz.
That emergency scenario fortunately did not come to be. The replacement Soyuz arrived safely on Feb. 25, removing the need for an unusual departure from the orbiting complex. But a relief crew could not arrive until yet another Soyuz spacecraft was ready, forcing Rubio and his colleagues to remain on board until the end of this month.
"My family has been the cornerstone that's inspired me to hopefully keep somewhat of a good attitude while I've been up here," Rubio said."The resilience that my wife and kids showed — they faced a lot of challenges this past year — they just thrived throughout the whole entire process. Having that really made it so much easier to be up here, and I'm incredibly grateful for them.
The longest single space mission was by Valery Polyakov, who banked 437 days in space aboard the then-Soviet. Three other Soviet cosmonauts also surpassed 365 days on the same station: Sergey Avdeev, Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov. Rubio officially broke the U.S. record for continuous days in space on Sept. 11, logging 355 days. The only other American to reach that mark, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, originally launched to space for a six-month mission in 2021, but he was warned pre-flight that his mission might be extended to a year due to
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