Gennady Padalka has spent more time in space than anyone else.
He is an RKA cosmonaut and has spent 879 days in space
He has worked on both Mir and the International Space Station.
On May 18, 1991, Krikalev arrived at the Mir space station on a Soyuz spacecraft after a five-month deployment. He was accompanied by Anatoly Artebarsky, a Soviet scientist, and Helen Sherman, a British scientist. He took off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Space Center.
Krikalev wouldn’t breathe earthly air for 312 days after blasting off from Baikonur. From 200 miles above, the soft-spoken cosmonaut would see his country fall apart. Leaders would be replaced; Leningrad — his hometown — would become St. Petersburg; and a single communist superpower would break up into 15 countries.
Krikalev would be the only remaining citizen of the once-mighty Soviet Union by the time he returned. He was sent to space as part of a routine mission. He needed to make some repairs to the station in order to improve it.
However, although everything appeared to be going smoothly in space, the Soviet Union appeared to be fast crumbling on the ground.
The massive and powerful Soviet Union dissolved in a matter of months while Krikalev was in space and even though he had arrived at the space station on an easy assignment, he was left hanging for several months as a result of this disintegration and the subsequent orders of staying put until further orders.
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