June 21, 2016
Categories: ISS, Roscosmos, Russia, Soyuz, Space

Hero of Russian Federation Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka who has taken part in 5 space missions celebrates his Birthday today, on June 21.

His first spaceflight started on August 13,1998, and lasted up to February 28, 1999. He went to Mir space station together with Sergey Avdeyev and Yuri Baturin onboard Soyuz TM-28 and landed with Ivan Bella (Slovakia).  In the course of this flight he performed one spacewalk of 6 hours and 26 minutes duration. The flight itself lasted for 199 days.

Then he went to space onboard Soyuz TMA-7 on April 19, 2004. That flight lasted for 188 days; Padalka performed 4 spacewalks spending on the whole 15 hours 44 minutes in the open space.  On October 24, 2004 the crew successfully landed in Kazakhstan.

For the third time Gennady Padalka went to space as Soyuz TMA-14 crew commander on March 26, 2009. The flight lasted for 199 days, in the course of the flight Padalka performed 2 spacewalks (5 hours 6 minutes). The crews conducted lots of scientific experiments in accordance with Russian, American, Canadian and Japanese programs.

Three years later Gennady went to space for the fourth time being Soyuz TMA-04M crew commander with Russian cosmonaut Sergey Revin and American astronaut Joseph Acaba. Padalka performed one spacewalk according to the ISS flight schedule.

His fifth space mission started on March 27, 2015.  Being a crew commander Gennady went to the ISS together with flight engineers Mikhail Korniyenko and Scott Kelly onboard Soyuz TMA-16M. In the course of this mission he set up new world record spending in space 877 days.

Image credit: GCTC

More from this category:
August 5, 2014

Soviet space device Kosmos-1151 was deorbited and burned in the dense atmosphere, Russian Aerospace Defence Troops representative Colonel Alexey Zolotukhin reported on Tuesday. Soviet space…

full story
August 7, 2020

The unified state program of space activities of Russia for the period 2021-2030 will be submitted for approval by the government by the end of…

full story
September 3, 2015

Another magnificent MAKS Aviation and Space Show took place in Zhukovskiy near Moscow from August 25 to August 30, 2015. This time our awesome aircraft…

full story
December 4, 2018

The crew members of the “Soyuz MS-11” spacecraft on December 3, 2018 at 22:38 Moscow time, went on board the International Space Station (ISS). Members…

full story
January 31, 2019

The Institute for Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences continues preparations for the SIRIUS-19 international isolation experiment. Start of the experiment is scheduled…

full story
July 18, 2024

Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, as well as their understudies Sergei Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, practised the operations they will perform during the spacewalk. The…

full story
January 29, 2014

Before the spaceflight cosmonauts and astronauts of international crews have to study training programs of all countries taking part in the ISS project. So NASA…

full story
January 15, 2019

On January 16, 1969 cosmonauts Boris Volynov (call name “Baikal-1”) and Vladimir Shatalov (call name “Amur-1”) docked two spacecrafts “Soyuz-5” and “Soyuz-4”. Two cosmonauts, Yevgeny…

full story