Gennady Padalka

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Gennady Ivanovich Padalka, born in Krasnodar, Russia, on June 21, 1958, is a Russian Air Force officer and an RKA cosmonaut.

Padalka has a world record for the longest time in space, having spent 879 days in space, more than any other person.

He worked on both Mir and the International Space Station.

Personal life

Padalka is married to Irina Anatoliyevna Padalka (Ponomareva). They have three children: Yuliya, Yekaterina, and Sonya. He loves theater, parachute sport, and diving.

Education and training

Padalka descended on Yeysk Military Aviation College in 1979. He began as a pilot and later a senior pilot in the Russian Air Force, eventually achieving the rank of colonel after graduation. As a First Class Pilot in the Russian Air Force, he has logged 1500 flight hours in six types of aircraft. In addition, he has completed more than 300 parachute jumps as an Instructor of General Parachute Training. Padalka served as an engineer-ecologist at the UNESCO International Center for Instruction Systems from 1994 to 1994. He is an investigator for the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound Microgravity Project, a US Government-funded study investigating how diagnostic telemedicine can be used in space.

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Cosmonaut career

In 1989, Gennady Padalka was selected as a cosmonaut candidate to begin training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. He underwent basic space education from June 1989 to January 1991, and in 1991, he was certified as a test-cosmonaut.

On August 13, 1998, Gennady and Sergei Avdeyev aboard Soyuz TM-28 to become the crew of Mir Expedition 26, whose primary aim was to make improvements to life support systems and prepare the station for deorbit, which was scheduled following Expedition 27. Padalka and Avdeyev began unloading at 11:23 GM on February 8, 1999, and they redocked at the +X Kvant port in Soyuz TM-28, freeing up the front port for the Soyuz TM-29 docking. On February 28, 1999, he returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz TM-28 capsule. On February 27, the Soyuz TM-28 landed in Kazakhstan at 22:52 GMT and landed in Kazakhstan on October 28. During the mission, Padalka completed 198 days and 16 hours of space travel.

Padalka served as a ISS contingency crew commander from June 1999 to July 2000. He trained for a space flight from August 2000 to November 2001 as the Expedition 4 back-up crew commander.

Padalka was commissioned as the head of the ISS Expedition 9 crew in March 2002. On April 21, 2004, Expedition 9 was launched by the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz TMA-4 spacecraft, and docked with the ISS. They upgraded the Expedition 8 crew who returned to Earth after a week of joint operations and handover briefings. Padalka's six-month service aboard the station continued ISS science experiments, maintained Station equipment, and conducted four spacewalks. After undocking and landing back in Kazakhstan on October 23, 2004, the Expedition 9 mission came to an end. Padalka completed the mission in 187 days, 21 minutes, and 17 seconds on space, as well as 15 hours, 45 minutes, and 22 seconds of EVA time.

Padalka returned to the ISS in 2009 to serve as Expeditions 19 and 20's commander. He commanded the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft, which was launched from Baikonur on March 26th, 2009 and docked with the ISS just two days later. Padalka also commanded the first six-person space station crew, who returned to Earth on October 11, 2009.

Padalka returned to the ISS for the third time in May 2012. Before retiring to command Expedition 32, he served as a flight engineer as part of Expedition 31.

He and fellow crew members Sergei Revin and Joseph Acaba arrived at the space station on May 17 at 4:36 UTC on May 15th, 2012, as a tenacious explorer on the ISS. On September 17, 2012, he, along with Revin and Acaba, returned to Earth.

During Expedition 43 and Expedition 44, Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko and Scott Kelly joined the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-16M, as well as Mikhail Korniyenko and Scott Kelly. He landed on Soyuz TMA-16M on September 12, 2015. Padalka set the fastest time in space for the first time in history.

Padalka had resigned from the Roscosmos cosmonaut corps in April 2017. Padalka's own decision was motivated by the fact that he has only a slim chance to participate in any space mission in the near future. "I had to resign"," the writer says. I am sick of doing nothing. "I will not fly [to the International Space Station (ISS)," he told TASS, "I have no guarantees that I will fly [to the International Space Station (ISS).

During a stay on Mir aboard Sergei Avdeyev and Company, Padalka conducted the first spacewalk of his career on September 15, 1998. The PKhO compartment of the Mir Core Module was depressed after performing spacesuits, and the spacewalkers entered the dead Spektr module at 20:00 GMT. A half hour later, the crew repaired some cables for the solar panel steering mechanism and closed the hatch. After a 30-minute spacewalk, the PKhO was revived.

Padalka and Avdeyev first stepped out into space on November 10, 1998. On Mir, the two men made the EVA from the Kvant-2 airlock. The launch time of the spacewalk was 19:24 GMT. The two spacewalking cosmonauts also fitted a meteoroid detector in the upcoming Leonid shower, as well as a hand-launched the Sputnik-41 amateur radio mini-satellite. On November 11, the space walk came to an end, clocking a total time of 5 hours and 54 minutes.

From the ISS's Pirs Docking Compartment, Padalka's third spacewalk was conducted on June 24, 2004. Due to a spacesuit malfunction of his fellow spacewalker, NASA astronaut Michael Fincke, the spacewalk was cut short. Within minutes after Fincke egressed, flight controllers noticed a decrease in pressure in his primary oxygen tank. Despite the fact that the spacewalk was supposed to last six hours, it was only for 14 minutes due to the problems.

Padalka and astronaut Michael Fincke performed their fourth spacewalk on June 30, 2004. On the space station, the pair successfully repaired a defective circuit breaker an hour ahead of schedule. The two spacewalkers repaired a broken unit called a remote power control module (RPCM) that had cut off electricity to its gyroscope during their repair job. The spacewalk lasted 5 hours and 40 minutes.

Gennady Padalka and Mike Fincke left the space station on August 3rd. to install communications equipment and revalid space exposure tests on the outside of the Zvezda Service Module. As Padalka and Fincke opened the outer hatch of the airlock at 6:58 GMT, the spacewalk was carried out from the Pirs Docking Compartment airlock and began. During the spacewalk, the two spacewalkers deleted six of the old laser reflectors used for docking and replaced four of them with newer ones. The crew also installed two antennas to enable the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to communicate with the space station and stutter a cable from a defective television camera, as well as removing a cable from a faulty television camera. Padalka's fifth career spacewalk was the 4 hour 20 minute excursion out of the ISS.

Padalka completed his sixth spacewalk on September 3, 2004, when he and Mike Fincke launched out into space for the sixth time. The spacewalk took place outside the Zvezda module. After emerging from the Pirs airlock, Padalka and Fincke launched the spacewalk at 16:43 GMT. The two spacewalkers replaced a pump control panel on the module's coolant level on the Zarya module. At the end of the Zvezda module, they also installed three communications antennas. The spacewalk lasted 5 hours and 21 minutes.

Padalka's seventh spacewalk took place on June 5th, 2009. Michael Barratt, a NASA explorer, and others egressed outside the ISS to build docking system antennas and cabling to fit the Mini Research Module 2 (MRM-2). Because of the spacesuits' higher than expected carbon dioxide levels, the spacewalk began an hour behind schedule. At 12:46 GMT, the spacewalk came to an end. The spacewalk lasted 4 hours and 54 minutes.

In the Zvezda module, Gennady Padalka and Michael Barratt entered the transfer compartment on June 10. Due to initial problems with pressure inside the airlock, the "internal spacewalk" got 10 minutes behind schedule, although it did not drop as fast as anticipated. Padalka and Barratt were required to wear space suits in the depressurized compartment, even though they were not in open space outside of the ISS. During the 12-minute spacewalk, the two crew members developed a docking system to accommodate the MRM-2. This was Padalka's eighth spacewalk.

Padalka and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko were on their ninth trip spacewalk together on August 20th. The two cosmonauts' tasks included hardware relocations, installations, retrieval, and deployments. Malenchenko wore an Orlan spacesuit with the blue stripe for the spacewalk. The spacewalk lasted 5 hours and 51 minutes. Due to a small leak between the International Space Station modules, the spacewalk was postponed for about an hour. At 15:37 GMT, the spacewalk began from the Pirs Docking Compartment Module. The first task for Padalka and Malenchenko was to move the Strela-2 boom from the Pirs module to the Zarya module's forward end. Since the Pirs module was to be removed from the space station for the delivery of the new Multi-purpose Laboratory Module (MLM) Nauka, both of which occurred in 2021, the relocation was required. Padalka and Malenchenko's next project was to install a 21-inch diameter spherical satellite. Five debris shields were also extracted from the Pirs Module before gluing them on the Zvezda Module by the two cosmonauts. As the pair approached an hour ahead of schedule, they completed several get-ahead tasks (since they both agreed not to rest during the night passes). For added security, they obtained Biorisk from the Pirs Module, and two structural support struts between the Pirs Module and the EVA ladder, which was recovered by an external experiment. To end a fruitful spacewalk, Padalka and Malenchenko had both descended on the Pirs Module prior to closing the hatch and starting the re-pressurization procedure.

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