NASA astronaut Frank Rubio has returned to Earth aboard the "Soyuz MS-23" spacecraft after spending 371 days in space, setting a record for the longest time spent in orbit by an American astronaut. NASA announced this achievement.
Rubio safely landed in the southern-eastern Kazakh city of Jezkazgan with his Russian colleagues, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, using parachutes for a safe descent.
Rubio expressed, "Honestly, what matters most to me is hugging my wife and kids, and probably paying attention to that in the first days."
The "Soyuz MS-23" crew spent a remarkable time in space, orbiting the Earth approximately 5,936 times over the course of more than a year. This is because the astronauts were not initially able to return to Earth due to problems with the spacecraft's docking mechanism and experienced a perilous malfunction. Ultimately, Rubio spent 168 days longer in orbit than his NASA colleague Mark Vande Hei, who returned as expected.
While Prokopyev and Petelin also spent more than a year in orbit, they did not break the Russian record held by cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov, who spent 437 days aboard the "Mir" space station in the 1990s.
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