NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio Comes Back from Space Expedition with Historic Achievements

Record-breaking NASA astronaut Frank Rubio finally returns to Earth, feeling the pull of Earth's gravity for the first time in more than a year.

Rubio and two of his Russian colleagues - cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petrin - landed in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz MS-23 capsule at 5:17 p.m. Stan. local time Wednesday (7:17 a.m. ET).

The crew's arrival marks the end of a long and unexpected journey for Rubio, who was supposed to spend six months aboard the International Space Station. Instead, he spent a total of 371 days in space after a coolant leak was discovered while his initial ride was docking with an orbiting outpost.

Rubio's stay set a new record and was the longest stay in weightlessness by an American astronaut. He was also the first American to record an entire calendar year in orbit.

His record-breaking mission also marked other noteworthy firsts for Rubio: It was his first in space since being selected to NASA's astronaut corps in 2017, and at the start of the mission, he was the first to fly at low altitude Salvadoran astronaut orbits Earth.

In a recent interview with CNN, Rubio said that if he had known that his stay on the space station would be twice as long as originally planned, he "probably would have declined" the mission before starting training.

"It's just because of a family incident that happened last year," he said. "If I knew I was going to have to miss these very important events, I would just say, 'Thanks, but no.'"

Rubio, a father of four, is now expected to begin his journey home from the Soyuz landing site near the city of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. He will first fly to Karaganda, about 530 kilometers northeast of Jezkazgan, before boarding a flight to Houston.

According to NASA, Rubio and his crewmates have traveled a total of 157.4 million miles (253.3 million kilometers) and made 5,963 revolutions around the Earth.

Rubio broke the previous record for the longest stay in space by an American astronaut, 355 days, which was set by Mark VandeHei in 2022.

The world record for the longest stay in space belongs to the late Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who spent 437 days orbiting the Russian space station Mir between January 1994 and March 1995.

U.S.-Russian cooperation in space

Rubio traveled to the space station on a Russian spacecraft as part of an agreement between NASA and Roscosmos that was finalized in the summer of 2022 amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The seat swap agreement is a continuation of a long-standing policy to ensure access to the space station for both the U.S. and Russia - the outpost's primary operators - in the event of spacecraft problems that leave their astronauts stranded.

Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin launched on a Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft on Sept. 21, 2022, and arrived safely at the ISS three hours later, leaving the Soyuz capsule docked to the outer surface of the space station before beginning work aboard the orbiting laboratory.

In an interview with reporters last week, Rubio thanked his family, noting that their "resilience and strength has sustained me throughout this mission."