Andrey Borisenko

Cosmonaut career

Andrey Borisenko became a cosmonaut candidate on May 29, 2003, after being chosen from RSC Energia. He started basic training in June 2003 and finished it two years later in June 2005, earning top marks on his state exams. On July 5, 2005, the Interdepartmental Qualification Commission certified him as a test-cosmonaut. He then spent the next three years, until August 2008, in advanced spaceflight training.

His first role was as a backup ISS flight engineer and Soyuz commander for Expeditions 24 and 25, but crew changes shifted him to the backup crew for Expeditions 23 and 24, where he trained as a backup flight engineer, commander, and Soyuz flight engineer. After Expedition 23/24 launched on Soyuz TMA-18 in April 2010, Borisenko left the backup crew and joined the prime crew for Expeditions 27 and 28, serving as flight engineer for 27 and commander for 28.

He launched with Soyuz commander Aleksandr Samokutyayev and NASA astronaut Ronald Garan on Soyuz TMA-21 from Baikonur Cosmodrome's Gagarin's Start pad at 23:18:20 UTC on April 4, 2011. The mission honored the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight. After two days of free flight, the spacecraft docked with the ISS on April 6 at 23:09 UTC, and the crew joined Expedition 27, which already included Russian commander Dmitri Kondratyev, NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman, and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

On May 22, 2011, Kondratyev handed command to Borisenko. Expedition 27 ended on May 24, 2011, when Soyuz TMA-20 departed with Kondratyev, Coleman, and Nespoli. The Expedition 28 crew later welcomed the Soyuz TMA-02M crew, which included Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and NASA astronaut Mike Fossum.

Did You Know?

• During re-entry of Soyuz TMA-21, repeated calls from Russian Mission Control went unanswered for several minutes before communication was reestablished via a circling plane.
• Borisenko's second launch on Soyuz MS-02 was delayed from 23 September to 19 October 2016 due to technical issues with the spacecraft.
• He and his crewmates landed on the Kazakh Steppe after a 173-day spaceflight, bringing his total time in space to 337 days.
• In 2016, Borisenko appeared as himself in the comedy film Yolki 5 alongside cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko.