Astronaut Frank Rubio ’98 has now been in low-Earth orbit for more than 355 days, breaking the record for the longest space mission by a U.S. astronaut.
Rubio — who has been on the International Space Station since September 2022 — bested the previous record, held by retired NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, at 1:40 p.m. ET on Monday, according to a spokesperson for the space agency.
What’s more, Rubio is on track to reach another significant milestone in a few weeks’ time. A Russian Soyuz capsule is not expected to return him and his two fellow crewmates — cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin — to Earth before September 27.
That means Rubio will have spent at least 371 days in orbit once he completes his mission. He is on the cusp of becoming the first American to spend more than one calendar year in microgravity.
