NASA's Frank Rubio, 2 Cosmonauts Return To Earth After 371 Days In Space Station Mission

Russia's Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin from the International Space Station (ISS), touched down to Earth on the steppe of Kazakhstan, at 1117 UTC on Wednesday (Sept. 27); ending an extended 371-day stay in space for all three.

The crew will be flown to the staging city of Karaganda from where Prokopyev and Petelin will return to Star City, outside of Moscow, and Rubio is flown by NASA jet back to Houston and NASA's Johnson Space Center. They began their trip home on Wednesday from the ISS at 0754 UTC. The undocking of their Soyuz spacecraft from the space station, officially marked the end of Expedition 69 and the start of Expedition 70 aboard the orbiting complex.

Rubio on Sept. 11, broke the record for the single longest mission flown by an American astronaut, surpassing the previous count of 355 days that was logged by fellow NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei in 2022. The 371-day mission was the third longest in history.

"My mission is really no different from Mark's," Rubio said during an in-flight press conference. "A lot of people have seen the endurance and the sacrifice that it takes to go this long. I'm just lucky to have gone a couple of extra weeks."

The three crewmates during their mission in the space station, orbited Earth 5936 times while traveling 253,330,550 km) or roughly the same as 328 round trips to the moon and back.

Prokopyev and Petelin are the sixth and seventh Russians to spend a year or more in space. Soviet-era cosmonauts Sergey Avdeev, Musa Manarov, Vladimir Titov and Valery Polyakov each spent more than 365 days on the former space station Mir. Polyakov, who died in 2022, still holds the worldwide record for the longest single space mission at 437 days.

The Soyuz MS-22/MS-23 mission was Prokopyev's second time in space. He has now logged 568 days off Earth, ranking him 12th among the worldwide population of space travelers. This was the first spaceflight for Petelin and Rubio, who joined their respective countries' corps in 2012 and 2017, respectively.

"You performed, Dmitri and Sergey, six spacewalks and Frank three," said European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who took over command of the space station from Prokopyev during a brief ceremony on Tuesday (Sept. 26). "And perhaps most remarkably of all, you flew in space during your mission with 28 other individuals. Your competence, dedication and hard work is also abundantly clear to me and my Expedition 70 crewmates. The space station is tidy, organized and work up here is flowing smoothly and efficiently. And that's in large part thanks to your hard work during the last year. On behalf of Expedition 70, I would like to thank you for setting us up for success."

Mogensen's Expedition 70 crewmates include NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara, cosmonauts Andrey Fedyaev, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub of Roscosmos and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa. Kononenko and Chub are scheduled to spend a year on the station to allow for a "taxi crew" and a short visit by a representative from the Republic of Belarus in March.

Unlike Kononenko and Chub, Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio did not know they would be off the planet for more six months when they launched on Sept. 21, 2022. Their mission was extended another half of a year after their first Soyuz, MS-22, suffered a coolant leak, leaving it no longer safe to return a crew to Earth. Russia, instead, launched a "rescue" Soyuz, MS-23, to bring the three crewmates home, but delayed their departure to maintain the crew rotation schedule.

"You have shown resilience, professionalism and grace in the face of unexpected challenges and significant uncertainty," Mogensen said to Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio. "It's one thing to launch into space knowing that you're going to be up here for a year. It's a completely different thing for you and your families to find out towards the end of your six-month mission that you are going to be spending an additional six months in space." 

"But you took it upon your shoulders and you excelled," he said.

WATCH the return to Earth of NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin aboard Soyuz MS-23