NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is back home on Earth after spending an unexpected year in space. He and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin made a parachute landing in their capsule in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (September 27).
Rubio was scheduled to spend six months aboard the International Space Station with his colleagues. However, his mission changed after discovering a coolant leak when he initially docked onto the space station.
According to CNN, Rubio’s 371 days in orbit set a new record for the longest time a U.S. astronaut has ever spent in space. NASA’s Mark Vande Hei set the previous record last year with 355 days.
Rubio also became the first American to spend a full calendar year in orbit. This was Rubio’s very first mission to space. He was selected for the NASA astronaut corps in 2017. He is also the first astronaut of Salvadoran descent to enter Earth’s lower orbit.
If Rubio had known his mission would take twice as long to complete, he said he “probably would have declined” going because of family events that he wanted to be a part of. “If I had 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,’” Rubio said.
While in space, Frank Rubio said he was looking forward to returning to Earth and “enjoying the peace and quiet” of the outdoors. “Up here, we kind of have the constant hum of machinery that’s keeping us alive,” he said.
