A few days ago, Russian Oleg Kononenko became the human who has spent the most time in space. He has now spent 878 days, almost two and a half years, accumulated during five missions to the International Space Station, and is still in orbit. He went up in September of last year and will not return until next September, when he will have accumulated 1,110 days, more than three years.
Extended space travel has consequences and has been carefully studied thanks to people like Kononenko. His work and that of others like him will be very important in understanding the risks and needs of humans on upcoming trips to the Moon and Mars. Muscle mass and more than 1% of bone mineral density are lost for each month in space. Upon reaching Earth following half a year in orbit, years of recovery are necessary and the risk of broken bones, erectile dysfunction or cancer due to exposure to cosmic radiation increases.
Among the people who have remained in space the longest there are extraordinary experiences such as that of the Russian Sergei Krikalev, who went into space in May 1991 from the Soviet Baikonur cosmodrome and descended in March 1992, when the USSR had disintegrated. In the more than 800 days that Krikalev has spent in space, due to a strange phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein, he has traveled 20 milliseconds into the future.
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