space travel record holder

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NASA astronaut Frank Rubio breaks U.S. record for longest spaceflight

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio now holds the record for the longest U.S. spaceflight.

Rubio surpassed the U.S. space endurance record of 355 days on Monday at the International Space Station. He arrived at the outpost last September with two Russians for a routine six months. But their stay was doubled after their Soyuz capsule  developed a coolant leak  while parked at the space station.

The trio will return to Earth on Sept. 27 in a  replacement capsule  that was sent up empty for the ride home. By then, Rubio will have spent 371 days in space, more than two weeks longer than  Mark Vande Hei , the previous U.S. record holder for a single spaceflight. Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the world record of 437 days, set in the mid-1990s.

“Your dedication is truly out of this world, Frank!” NASA chief Bill Nelson said via X, formerly known as Twitter.

A replacement crew of two Russians and an American is set to launch to the station from Kazakhstan on Friday.

The Associated Press

'It's been an incredible challenge:' NASA astronaut tells all on setting new record for longest US spaceflight (video)

By the time he departs the space station, Frank Rubio will be the first American to spend a year in space on one mission.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio celebrated a spaceflight milestone with two former astronauts on Earth.

NASA 's Frank Rubio spoke with senior NASA management from the International Space Station on Thursday (Sept. 13), two days after breaking the previous record of 355 days on a single spaceflight. Rubio is now expected to spend 371 days in orbit, making him the first American to spend more than a year in space on a single mission. More incredibly, it wasn't planned that way; problems with his spacecraft forced an expected six-month orbital stay to double to a year.

"It was unexpected. In some ways, it's been an incredible challenge," Rubio said of the milestone during the livestreamed call on NASA Television, with NASA administrator Bill Nelson and deputy administrator Pam Melroy. "But in other ways, it's been an incredible blessing. I count myself lucky and honored to be able to represent the agency and our country."

Rubio, a Salvadorian-American born in Los Angeles, added that with his record-breaking stay falling during National Hispanic Heritage Month (which concludes Oct. 15), he finds it "timely" as it "symbolizes the diversity of the wonderful rich fabric of America."

Related: NASA astronaut Frank Rubio surprised by his accidental record in space (video)

Rubio and his Russian MS-22 Soyuz spacecraft crewmates Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, cosmonauts from Roscosmos , were scheduled to spend a typical six months in space after launching Sept. 21, 2022. Both Rubio and Petelin were on their first flight.

Halfway through their stay, however, MS-22, also serving as their ride home, dramatically lost all its coolant in a December 2022 leak. After considering options, Roscosmos rapidly shipped up an empty replacement Soyuz, called MS-23, which arrived on Feb. 25. 

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The agencies also formulated an emergency escape plan from the ISS before MS-23 arrived, assigning Rubio on a temporary seat (involving tie-down straps on the floor of an already docked SpaceX Crew Dragon ). His Russian crewmates were authorized to use MS-22 if absolutely needed, as two humans would not heat up the uncooled spacecraft as rapidly as three. But that plan luckily did not need to be implemented after MS-23 safely docked.

Read more : Russia's replacement Soyuz spacecraft arrives at space station

Rubio and his crewmates, however, were needed to stay on board until a relief crew could arrive. That required getting yet another spacecraft (MS-24) ready for spaceflight to send the astronauts. Since NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub were supposed to use MS-23, that crew's departure date on MS-24 was delayed to no earlier than Sept. 15 for their MS-24 reassignment. 

Assuming this all goes to plan, Rubio and his crewmates will finally depart space on Sept. 27.

"As much as it was a challenge to say an extra six months, I'm so grateful that the agency was able to say, 'Hey, you know what the safe thing to do would be: To fire up a new spacecraft, and have (my crew) wait and ensure a more safe return," Rubio said in the call, adding, "I am looking forward to a return on a more safe and more secure spacecraft."

Nelson and Melroy, both flown astronauts from the space shuttle program, paid tribute to the challenges Rubio had faced in orbit. (Melroy flew three times as a NASA astronaut. Nelson, then a member of the House of Representatives on a space committee, flew on mission STS-61C in 1986 under a program NASA then had for non-professionals to reach space.)

"You made all kinds of records up there, and you've had six months that you didn't expect," said Nelson, speaking from NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Melroy, standing beside Nelson in the view of the video, said Rubio's wife and kids "have been on my mind so much." The former astronaut added she wanted to check in to make sure Rubio was getting the support he needed. 

Rubio said that the NASA community had rallied around him, sending people over to the house as needed to help the family. Luckily, upgrades to NASA's internet on station came in during his mission as well, allowing for high-quality video conferences with family at least twice a week, he said.

Rubio joked that his only regret was not eating one of the space-grown Red Robin tomatoes his crew tended, and managed to save from an unexpected humidity drop on ISS at a crucial growth point. Rubio's inch-long tomato unfortunately floated away to a hidden spot before he could take a bite. "I spent so many hours looking for that thing," he quipped. "I'm sure the desiccated tomato will show up at some point and vindicate me, years in the future."

— Astronaut Frank Rubio breaks US record on way to spending a year in space

 — UAE's 1st long-duration astronaut says a moon mission is within reach

 —  NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara ready for Soyuz launch to relieve delayed crew in space

Only seven astronauts have spent more than a year in space. Aside from the trio on MS-22/23, the other four were cosmonauts on missions visiting the then-Soviet Mir space station . Topping the list is Valery Polyakov (437 days), while the others are Sergey Avdeev, Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov.

Rubio's mark surpasses the 355-day record last set by NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei. Vande Hei was also expected to spend six months in space, but learned preflight he may extend to a year due to space station staffing needs (which is what ended up happening.)

Vande Hei, speaking with Rubio earlier this month from NASA's Johnson Space Station in Houston, said the most memorable part of his own stay was "the people that I got to spend that much time [with] … intensively, both working and playing as much as we possibly can." 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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NASA record holder can relate to astronauts stuck in space. He was, too

NASA's record-holding astronaut is urging his two stuck-in-space colleagues to stay positive and “keep up the good work."

NASA’s record-holding astronaut is urging his two stuck-in-space colleagues to stay positive and “keep up the good work.”

Frank Rubio knows firsthand about unexpectedly long spaceflights. His own visit to the International Space Station lasted just over a year, twice as long as planned.

So for the past two weeks, he's been helping out with his friends' extended stay . He said he spoke with Suni Williams on Thursday and expressed pride in how she and Butch Wilmore have coped with their situation.

Williams and Wilmore should have returned to Earth on Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule back in June, a week after blasting off on its first test flight with a crew. After extensive tests and analysis of thruster problems and helium leaks, NASA decided last weekend it would be safer for SpaceX to fly them home, but that won’t happen until February, more than eight months after they blasted off.

“They’re doing great work, really maintaining a positive attitude up there, setting a great example and knocking out a whole lot of extra work on the space station,” Rubio told The Associated Press from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

While remaining in space until next year is not “the optimal outcome,” Rubio said, "they've done a fantastic job of dealing with adversity.” Their families, like his own, also have had to make sacrifices because of the switch in plans.

“But that’s part of our job is just to adapt and overcome and make the best of the situation," he said, "and they’ve done just that, so super proud of them.”

Williams and Wilmore haven't spoken publicly about the Starliner dilemma since their lone orbital news conference last month, well before the decision to bump them to SpaceX and bring Boeing's capsule back empty in early September.

Rubio's own mission was extended after his Russian Soyuz capsule was hit by space junk and leaked all its coolant. A new Soyuz had to be rushed up for him and his two Russian crewmates, and they rode it back to Earth last September. Rubio holds the U.S. record for the longest single spaceflight with his 371-day mission.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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NASA record holder can relate to astronauts stuck in space. He was, too

NASA’s record-holding astronaut is urging his two stuck-in-space colleagues to stay positive and “keep up the good work.”

Frank Rubio knows firsthand about unexpectedly long spaceflights. His own visit to the International Space Station lasted just over a year, twice as long as planned.

So for the past two weeks, he’s been helping out with his friends’ extended stay. He said he spoke with Suni Williams on Thursday and expressed pride in how she and Butch Wilmore have coped with their situation.

Williams and Wilmore should have returned to Earth on Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule back in June, a week after blasting off on its first test flight with a crew. After extensive tests and analysis of thruster problems and helium leaks, NASA decided last weekend it would be safer for SpaceX to fly them home, but that won’t happen until February, more than eight months after they blasted off.

“They’re doing great work, really maintaining a positive attitude up there, setting a great example and knocking out a whole lot of extra work on the space station,” Rubio told The Associated Press from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

While remaining in space until next year is not “the optimal outcome,” Rubio said, “they’ve done a fantastic job of dealing with adversity.” Their families, like his own, also have had to make sacrifices because of the switch in plans.

“But that’s part of our job is just to adapt and overcome and make the best of the situation,” he said, “and they’ve done just that, so super proud of them.”

Williams and Wilmore haven’t spoken publicly about the Starliner dilemma since their lone orbital news conference last month, well before the decision to bump them to SpaceX and bring Boeing’s capsule back empty in early September.

Rubio’s own mission was extended after his Russian Soyuz capsule was hit by space junk and leaked all its coolant. A new Soyuz had to be rushed up for him and his two Russian crewmates, and they rode it back to Earth last September. Rubio holds the U.S. record for the longest single spaceflight with his 371-day mission.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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NASA record holder can relate to astronauts stuck in space. He was, too

NASA's record-holding astronaut is urging his two stuck-in-space colleagues to stay positive and "keep up the good work."

Frank Rubio knows firsthand about unexpectedly long spaceflights. His own visit to the International Space Station lasted just over a year, twice as long as planned.

So for the past two weeks, he's been helping out with his friends' extended stay. He said he spoke with Suni Williams on Thursday and expressed pride in how she and Butch Wilmore have coped with their situation.

• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

Williams and Wilmore should have returned to Earth on Boeing's troubled Starliner capsule back in June, a week after blasting off on its first test flight with a crew. After extensive tests and analysis of thruster problems and helium leaks, NASA decided last weekend it would be safer for SpaceX to fly them home, but that won't happen until February, more than eight months after they blasted off.

"They're doing great work, really maintaining a positive attitude up there, setting a great example and knocking out a whole lot of extra work on the space station," Rubio told The Associated Press from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

While remaining in space until next year is not "the optimal outcome," Rubio said, "they've done a fantastic job of dealing with adversity." Their families, like his own, also have had to make sacrifices because of the switch in plans.

"But that's part of our job is just to adapt and overcome and make the best of the situation," he said, "and they've done just that, so super proud of them."

Williams and Wilmore haven't spoken publicly about the Starliner dilemma since their lone orbital news conference last month, well before the decision to bump them to SpaceX and bring Boeing's capsule back empty in early September.

Rubio's own mission was extended after his Russian Soyuz capsule was hit by space junk and leaked all its coolant. A new Soyuz had to be rushed up for him and his two Russian crewmates, and they rode it back to Earth last September. Rubio holds the U.S. record for the longest single spaceflight with his 371-day mission.

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NASA Record Holder Can Relate to Astronauts Stuck in Space. He Was, Too

NASA's record-holding astronaut is urging his two stuck-in-space colleagues to stay positive and “keep up the good work."

Ivan Timoshenko

FILE - In this photo released by Roscosmos State Corporation, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio sits in a chair shortly after the landing of the Russian Soyuz MS-23 space capsule about 150 km (90 miles) south-east of the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, Sept. 27, 2023. (Ivan Timoshenko/Roscosmos Space Corporation via AP, File)

NASA’s record-holding astronaut is urging his two stuck-in-space colleagues to stay positive and “keep up the good work.”

Frank Rubio knows firsthand about unexpectedly long spaceflights. His own visit to the International Space Station lasted just over a year, twice as long as planned.

So for the past two weeks, he's been helping out with his friends' extended stay . He said he spoke with Suni Williams on Thursday and expressed pride in how she and Butch Wilmore have coped with their situation.

Williams and Wilmore should have returned to Earth on Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule back in June, a week after blasting off on its first test flight with a crew. After extensive tests and analysis of thruster problems and helium leaks, NASA decided last weekend it would be safer for SpaceX to fly them home, but that won’t happen until February, more than eight months after they blasted off.

“They’re doing great work, really maintaining a positive attitude up there, setting a great example and knocking out a whole lot of extra work on the space station,” Rubio told The Associated Press from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

While remaining in space until next year is not “the optimal outcome,” Rubio said, "they've done a fantastic job of dealing with adversity.” Their families, like his own, also have had to make sacrifices because of the switch in plans.

“But that’s part of our job is just to adapt and overcome and make the best of the situation," he said, "and they’ve done just that, so super proud of them.”

Williams and Wilmore haven't spoken publicly about the Starliner dilemma since their lone orbital news conference last month, well before the decision to bump them to SpaceX and bring Boeing's capsule back empty in early September.

Rubio's own mission was extended after his Russian Soyuz capsule was hit by space junk and leaked all its coolant. A new Soyuz had to be rushed up for him and his two Russian crewmates, and they rode it back to Earth last September. Rubio holds the U.S. record for the longest single spaceflight with his 371-day mission.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Copyright 2024 The  Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The Outdated Language of Space Travel

“Manned” spaceflight doesn’t make sense anymore.

Half a century ago, there was only one kind of astronaut in the United States. Men launched atop rockets to space. Men maneuvered landers down to the surface of the moon. Men guided spacecraft safely home. From start to finish, they were at the controls. So it makes sense that the effort to send people to orbit and beyond was called “manned” spaceflight.

But when Peggy Whitson hears someone call the spaceflight program “manned” today, she can’t stifle her physical reaction.

“I cringe a little bit,” Whitson says.

The terminology is simply no longer accurate, and Whitson, a former astronaut at NASA, is just one example why. Whitson served as commander on two missions to the International Space Station, and spent 665 days in space, more than any other American astronaut, man or woman. NASA retired the description years ago, saving it for historical references to its early days, and now uses human and crewed . But as the country commemorated the 50th anniversary of the moon landing last week, the obsolete language cropped up in discussions about the modern American spaceflight program and its future, in congressional hearings , national headlines (some of which were edited quietly after publication ), and elsewhere.

It shouldn’t happen again. Manned is a woefully outdated choice of vocabulary to describe the actions of an organization that has employed female astronauts for the majority of its existence. Language matters , and this particular vernacular reinforces the notion, once held to be true, that space exploration is for men only. It does a disservice to the dozens of women who became astronauts after Apollo, and to those who dream of doing the same. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, once said . The same is true of what you can’t hear or read.

In 1962, Congress convened a hearing to discuss the possibility of training female astronauts, after a group of 13 women successfully completed the same tests NASA gave its male candidates, in some cases doing better than the men. “I think this gets back to the way our social order is organized, really,” John Glenn, who had become the first American to orbit Earth only months earlier, told members of Congress. “The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.”

The group of female trainees was disbanded, and NASA went on to send dozens of men into orbit around Earth and to the moon, their journeys carefully monitored from Mission Control in the appropriately named Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

That facility was renamed the Johnson Space Center in 1973, several months after the end of the sixth and final mission to touch down on the moon’s surface. The rebranding was a better match for NASA’s next chapter; the agency had just started sending robotic, passenger-free spacecraft beyond the moon and deeper into the solar system, the first in a long line of machines that would take over the work of exploring the cosmos. Of course, the agency had new terminology to go along with these new spacecraft, programmed and piloted from afar: unmanned .

The push into deep space coincided with the development of NASA’s next generation of astronaut transportation, the space-shuttle program. The massive shuttle could carry far more people than the cramped Apollo capsules, which meant the passenger list didn’t have to be limited, as it had been, to mostly military pilots such as Neil Armstrong. Suddenly, there was room for the astronaut corps to more closely resemble the general population, including the half who had long been excluded.

When NASA selected its first female astronauts in 1978, “manned” was still the standard label for spaceflight that included humans. It did not help that the needs of this new class of astronauts were often, and sometimes astonishingly, misunderstood. Before Ride became the first American woman in space, in 1983, NASA staffers asked her whether 100 tampons would be enough for her one-week mission in orbit.

“When you’re a bloke, terms such as ‘mankind’ automatically include you. You don’t have to think about it at all; you’re already in there,” Alice Gorman, an archaeologist who studies the history and heritage of space exploration, wrote on her blog in 2014. “Women have to ‘think themselves into’ such expressions, even if it happens at a subconscious level.”

Research has found that this feeling of exclusion can have real, measurable effects. Studies by the National Institute of Mental Health in the 1970s, when NASA first began to recruit women astronauts, showed that women were significantly less likely to apply for jobs with titles that ended in man rather than person . A similar effect was found among men, who avoided professions with feminine-sounding names.

Such thinking is difficult to dispel. A study of college students in 1988 found that those instructed to complete sentences about professionals using he and him were more likely to imagine men, even when the researchers said the pronouns applied to both men and women. When the students used gender-neutral language, they pictured fewer men as they wrote.

This subconscious reasoning can take root early. In a 2013 study , when elementary-school teachers described male-dominated professions, such as astronaut, using masculine rather than gender-neutral language, their female students were more likely to think that women in those roles were less successful.

Astronauts who joined NASA in the 1990s say the agency had shifted away from manned and toward gender-neutral language by the time they arrived. But vestiges of Apollo-era vernacular still floated around, in part because many engineers who worked those missions were still at NASA. “There was still a lot of the same—I don’t want to say mind-set in a negative sense—but, ‘We call it this because we call it this, and no one’s ever questioned it,’” says Danny Olivas, who became an astronaut in 1998.

Pamela Melroy, another now-retired astronaut, remembers the terminology coming up in jokes. She joined NASA in 1995, after working as a pilot in the Air Force. When Melroy and a female colleague boarded a T-38, a sleek two-seater jet that astronauts often use for commuting, “the guys out on the flight line would tease me that it was an unmanned mission,” Melroy says.

NASA formally codified its preference for crewed and human over manned to describe spaceflight in the early 2000s, as part of a “major overhaul” of the agency’s internal style guide , says Stephanie Schierholz, a NASA spokesperson. Today the entry appears as follows:

manned, unmanned . Avoid use. In many cases, the distinction is unnecessary or implied. Substitute terms such as autonomous, crewed, human, piloted, unpiloted, robotic, remotely piloted.

“Now if we could just get others to follow suit,” Schierholz says.

The shift in NASA nomenclature did not prompt a massive revision of history books, or a frantic rush to wipe any mention of manned from Apollo mission reports. It sought to capture the reality of the changing organization, an effort that is more common and less fraught than you might think. For example, in 2016, after the Pentagon opened all military combat roles to women, the Marine Corps removed man from 19 job titles.

These days, the idea of an American manned-spaceflight program is a phantom. The proposal for the next moon mission not only includes women astronauts; it is named for Artemis, Apollo’s sister in Greek mythology—a woman, albeit an imaginary one. Donald Trump’s administration has stressed that the crew of the next lunar journey, targeted for 2024, will include the first woman to walk on the moon. NASA needs buckets of money from Congress to carry out the effort, so its immediate future remains uncertain . But whether the next American trip to the moon launches five years from now or 50, it will not be a manned mission.

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