On the evening of September 23, 2024, at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow landed a special aircraft with the commander and flight engineer of the Soyuz MS-25 crew Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.
From the airfield cosmonauts on a special GCTC bus went to the Complex of pre-launch training and post-flight rehabilitation of cosmonauts in Star City, where their health will be monitored by doctors.
This was the fifth space flight for Oleg Kononenko, the spacecraft commander. The record-breaker for a human stay in space (1111 days in orbit!) was waited for by relatives and friends, representatives of the management of the State Corporation “Roscosmos” and the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
Oleg Kononenko has performed seven spacewalks during five long expeditions to the ISS, two of which – during the flight period from September 2023 to September 2024.
The sixth spacewalk for Oleg Kononenko and the first for Nikolai Chub took place on October 25, 2023. During an extravehicular activity lasting 7 hours and 41 minutes, the cosmonauts disconnected the hydraulic circuits of an additional radiation heat exchanger, including a leaky one, which leaked coolant on October 9, 2023, from the external hydraulic circuits of the thermal maintenance system of the multipurpose laboratory module “Nauka”.
Next, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub installed a small-size radar on the passive fixation device UFP-2 on the Nauka module and connected it. This equipment is designed to monitor the Earth’s surface for environmental control and emergency tracking. The cosmonauts also launched a student nanosatellite designed to work out the technology of solar sail deployment.
On April 25, 2024, the cosmonauts were again engaged in extravehicular activities. Oleg Kononenko performed a spacewalk for the seventh time and Nikolai Chub – for the second time. During 4 hours and 36 minutes of work overboard they moved, installed, and connected scientific equipment.
The total duration of the cosmonauts’ stay in open space amounted to 12 hours and 17 minutes. In addition, during 374 days in orbit, which is also a record for the duration of work of Russian crew members on the International Space Station, Oleg Kononenko, and Nikolay Chub successfully conducted more than 60 experiments, including 7 new ones.
In addition to the family and the GCTC leadership, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub were greeted by their colleagues in the cosmonaut squadron of which Oleg is the commander.
A year-long flight in zero gravity requires a rather long period of rehabilitation.
– According to the results obtained in the medical research, doctors will determine what approaches should be used to rehabilitate astronauts. Usually, it takes us about three weeks, then the second rehabilitation stage begins at the sanatorium: astronauts with their families recover after the flight, – told reporters the head of the CPC Maxim Kharlamov.
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub will spend the first weeks under the supervision of doctors in Star City, then our cosmonauts will be recuperated in one of the sanatoriums of the Stavropol Territory.
Welcome back, heroes!
