Oleg Kononenko

Early life and career

Oleg Kononenko was born on 21 June 1964 in Chardzhou, Turkmen SSR (now Türkmenabat, Turkmenistan). His father Dmitry Ivanovich Kononenko drove a truck for a freight company, and his mother Taisiya Stepanovna Churakova worked as a communications operator at the Türkmenabat Airport. He graduated from high school No. 15 in Türkmenabat with excellent marks in the Turkmen language.

After failing to enter the Kharkov Aviation Institute on his first attempt, he worked for a year in the tool shop of the Türkmenabat Airport aviation technical base. He succeeded on his second try and graduated from the N. E. Zhukovskiy Kharkiv Aviation Institute in 1988 as a mechanical engineer. Following graduation, he worked at TsSKB-Progress in Kuybishev, starting as an engineer and rising to leading design engineer, focusing on spacecraft electrical power systems.

Cosmonaut career

Kononenko was selected as a cosmonaut candidate on 29 March 1996. He trained at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center from June 1996 to March 1998 and was awarded the title of test cosmonaut on 20 March 1998. He began ISS program training in October 1998. From December 2001 to April 2002, he trained as a backup flight engineer for Soyuz TM-34.

From March 2002 to February 2004, he trained as flight engineer for Soyuz TMA and the Expedition 9 and 11 primary crews. From March 2004 to March 2006, he trained with the ISS cosmonaut group. In March 2006, he began training as flight engineer for Soyuz TMA-12 and Expedition 17. He launched on 8 April 2008 and spent 199 days in space.

Expedition 17

During Expedition 17, he conducted two spacewalks: on 10 July 2008, he and Sergey Volkov inspected their Soyuz TMA-12 and retrieved a pyro bolt in 6 hours 18 minutes; on 15 July 2008, they installed and retrieved experiments, installed a docking target on Zvezda, and outfitted the station exterior in 5 hours 54 minutes. He returned to Earth on 24 October 2008 with Volkov and Richard Garriott, landing 55 miles north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. For Expedition 30/31, he launched on 21 December 2011 with André Kuipers and Donald Pettit, arriving on 23 December.

Expedition 30/31

On 12 February 2012, he and Anton Shkaplerov conducted a six-hour spacewalk to install micrometeoroid shields on Zvezda, move the Strela 1 crane from Pirs to Poisk, install struts on a ladder, and set up the Vynoslivost experiment on Poisk. They returned to Earth on 1 July 2012. For Expedition 44/45, he launched as Soyuz commander on 22 July 2015 with Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui on Soyuz TMA-17M, spending 142 days in space and landing on 11 December 2015.

Expedition 69/70/71

For Expedition 57/58/59, he launched on Soyuz MS-11 on 3 December 2018. Due to the Soyuz MS-10 launch failure, he commanded both Expedition 58 and Expedition 59. He returned to Earth on 24 June 2019 after 203 days 15 hours 16 minutes. For Expedition 69/70/71, he launched on Soyuz MS-24 in September 2023 with Nikolai Chub for a 374-day mission.

He broke the world record of 878 days on 4 February 2024 at 07:30:08 UTC, and became the first person to reach 900, 1,000, and 1,100 days in space on 25 February 2024, 4 June 2024, and 12 September 2024 respectively.

Honors and awards

Kononenko was named Hero of the Russian Federation on 5 February 2009 for courage and heroism during space flight. He received the Medal 'For Merit in Space Exploration' on 12 April 2011. He was also named Hero of Turkmenistan in 2019.