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Expedition 11
Commander Sergei Krikalev U5MIR |
Krikalev sets
'time-in-space'
record
Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev became the human with the most
cumulative time in space early yesterday morning.
At 1:44 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, he passed the record of 748 days held by
Sergei Avdeyev.
In ISS Mission Control Houston, spacecraft communicator Ken Ham called
Krikalev to congratulate him. "Fly on, Sergei," Ham said.
Mission Control Moscow also saluted Krikalev's achievement, and Krikalev
joked in Russian, "You'll have to congratulate me every day from
now on."
Krikalev spent his more than two years in space beginning in November
1988 with the start of his first long-duration flight to the Soviet space
station Mir. Krikalev did back-to-back increments on his next Mir flight
starting in May 1991 and returning to Earth in March 1992. While he was
in orbit, the Soviet Union disintegrated and Mir became a Russian space
station.
He became the first Russian to fly a Shuttle mission on STS-60 in February
1994. His second Shuttle flight took the Unity node to the International
Space Station on STS-88 in December 1998. He was a member of the Station's
Expedition 1 crew, launching in October 2000 and returning to Earth in
March 2001. He launched as commander of Expedition 11 last April 14.
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