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