377 Days
Published on Apr 20, 2008 at 10:16 am.
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Yesterday, when the TMA-11 Soyuz touched down in Kazakhstan, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson was aboard. She was returning to Earth after having spend 192 days in space, all but about two of which was on the International Space Station. She was just finishing serving as the commander of the ISS Expedition 16 mission. Now, 192 days in space is a lot. But, it doesn’t quite match Michael Lopez-Alegria’s 215 continuous days in space from about a year ago. But, with this mission, Whitson has now accumulated at total of 377 days in space. That is slightly more than the 374 days in space accumulated by astronaut Michael Foale. But, what is amazing is that this is only the second space mission for Whitson. Foale accumulated his 374 days over six missions. The reason for this is that both missions that Whitson served on were to the International Space Station. These ISS stays are among the longest missions that NASA has flown, so just two of them have been enough for Whitson to rack up the record for the most number of days in space by any NASA astronaut. Her earlier trip into space was Expedition 5 to the ISS, from June 5 to December 7, 2002.
Peggy Whitson is 48 years old and has a PhD in biochemistry from Rice University. Shortly after receiving her doctorate, she began work at the Johnson Space Center, in 1988, first for a medical sciences contractor, and then eventually for NASA. She was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1996. In her two missions to the ISS, Whitson performed six spacewalks.
I should point out, though, that her 377 days in space, while a record for an American astronaut, doesn’t even come close to the 803 days in space record held by cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. That is going to be a hard record to match, and I don’t see it happening any time soon.
-Astroprof
