215 Days
Published on Apr 21, 2007 at 4:21 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under space exploration, space station.
Early this morning, 12:31 UT (7:31 am CDT), a Soyuz spacecraft touched down in Kazakhstan carrying space tourist Charles Simonyi and ISS Expedition 14 crew members Michael Lopez-Alegria (commander) and Mikhail Tyurin (flight engineer). A lot of people are writing about Simonyi’s trip, but I wanted to focus on Lopez-Alegria. He had been in space for 215 days straight, almost three weeks longer than any other American.
Lopez-Alegria was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1958, but he grew up in California. He has a master of science degree in aeronautical engineering, and he is a captain in the US Navy. In addition to now holding the record for the longest time any American has been on a space mission, he also holds the record for the most time spend in extravehicular activities (spacewalks), 67 hours and 40 minutes. In addition to this mission, Lopez-Alegria had previously flown on three Space Shuttle missions, accumulating about 258 days in space. And, while that is impressive, it is far from a US record for total space time. That record is held by Michael Foale, who has racked up almost 373 days. But, even that pales when compared with the total time in space of more than 804 days by cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev.
-Astroprof
Image Courtesy NASA TV
Astroprof’s Page » 377 Days on April 20, 2008 at 10:17 am: 1
[…] 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 […]