CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (WSVN) — A U.S astronaut is marking an out of this world record as he gets ready to return to Earth. The South Florida native has spent one full year in orbit.
A few weeks before NASA astronaut Frank Rubio launched to the International Space Station with two cosmonauts on a Russian Soyuz Rocket, he spoke about the geopolitical tensions that he’d be leaving behind on earth.
Rubio was asked if he had second thoughts about flying on the Russian aircraft since the country is in the middle of a conflict with Ukriane.
“You know, again not really because I trust my crew wholeheartedly,” Rubio said. “If anything, right, there’s a little bit of nerves about the whole big picture, going to space for the first time and spending six months up there.”
But six months quickly turned into a full year after his ride home. The Soyuz spacecraft was struck by a small object in space, which punctured the Soyuz’s radiator and spewed coolant into space.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, decided that the spacecraft was unsafe and a replacement Soyuz had to be sent to bring the crew home.
Rubio, who was on his first space flight and had just become the first Salvadoran-American to go to space, it meant being away from his wife and four children for double the time he’d been preparing for.
“I think it would have depended on when I would have found out,” he said. “Obviously, if they had asked me up front before you start training, because you do train for a year or two years for your mission, I probably would have declined. And that’s only because of family, things that were going on this past year. And had I known that I would have had to miss those very important events, I just would have had to say, ‘Thank you, but no thank you.’ But once you commit to the mission, once you’re part of the training, I would have been committed to the mission.”
By the time Rubio returns to Earth next week, he will have been in space for 371 days, which is longer than any other American in history.
He had three spacewalks, conducted dozens of science experiments, but perhaps the most interesting experiment for this army doctor turned astronaut, was the one that zero gravity has been conducting on his own body.
“The reality is we’re not standing, we’re not walking, we’re not bearing our own weight, and so it will be anywhere from two to six months before I essentially say that I feel normal,” Rubio said.
And normal is exactly what Rubio is craving. To spend time with his family and time outside these walls on Earth.
“Up here, we kind of have the constant hum of machinery that’s keeping us alive, and so I’m looking forward to just being outside and enjoying the peace and quiet,” he said.
Rubio is still shy of the world record for time in orbit. That record belongs to a Russian cosmonaut who logged 437 continuous days in space.
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