NASA astronaut spends record 371 days in space

(Patria) - NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio has finally returned to Earth, feeling the planet's gravitational pull for the first time in over a year.

Rubio and two Russian colleagues, cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, landed by parachute in Kazakhstan aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-23 capsule at 5:17 p.m. local time on Wednesday.

The crew's arrival marked the end of an unexpectedly long journey for Rubio, who was supposed to spend only six months on the International Space Station.

Instead, he spent a total of 371 days in space. His journey was extended after he discovered a coolant leak during the flight.

Rubio's stay set a new record for the longest period any American astronaut has ever spent in microgravity.

He also became the first American to log an entire calendar year in orbit.

The record-breaking mission also marked other significant firsts for Rubio.

After 371 days of exploration and @ISS_Research in low Earth orbit, Frank Rubio is back on the ground.

Get the details on his mission, the longest single spaceflight by a NASA astronaut: https://t.co/1L4JmRxQAY pic.twitter.com/5TKvOaNqTX

— NASA (@NASA) September 27, 2023

This was his first trip to space after being selected for NASA's astronaut corps in 2017, and at the start of the mission, he became the first astronaut of Salvadoran descent to travel into low Earth orbit.

In a recent interview with CNN, Rubio said he would likely have declined the assignment had he known his stay on the space station would be twice as long as originally planned.

- And that's just because of family things that were happening last year. And if I had known that I would have to miss those very important events, I simply would have had to say "thank you, but no thank you" - he said.

Rubio, who has four children, is expected to begin his journey home from the Soyuz spacecraft landing site near the Kazakh city of Dzhezkazgan.

He will first fly to Karaganda, which is about 530 kilometers northeast of Dzhezkazgan, before boarding a flight to Houston.

All in all, Rubio and his crew members traveled 253.3 million kilometers, according to NASA data.