“Vast gratitude toward my crewmates, ground teams, supporting friends, and family”, Williams added.
Advertisement
The only other USA astronaut to come close is Scott Kelly, who logged a total of 520 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes in space earlier this year.
Nasa astronaut Jeff Williams (pictured being carried by crew in Kazakhstan this morning) first blasted into space aboard the shuttle Atlantis in 2000.
Station commander Jeff Williams, with NASA, and flight engineers Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, both with Russia’s Roscosmos agency, pulled away from the station at 5:51 p.m. ET Tuesday as the ships sailed 258 miles over eastern Mongolia, said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.
The departing crew are expected to make a rocket-assisted landing around 9:14 p.m. (7:14 a.m. Wednesday local time) in an area of flat terrain in Kazakhstan near the town of Dzhezkazgan.
American astronaut Jeff Williams became the USA record-holder for most time spent in orbit after this mission brought him up to 534 days spent in space across four separate missions.
Described as a “parking spot for spacecraft” the installation will allow more astronauts to travel to the ISS.
“This is a very significant time, in my opinion, in the life of the space station”, Williams said.
Now-retired astronaut Scott Kelly still holds the US record for consecutive days in space (340 days), but Williams surpassed him in total time, thanks to his three long-term stays on the space station plus a shuttle flight in 2000.
The Russians remain champions of long-duration spaceflight, with cosmonaut Gennady Padalka now the world record-holder with 878 days in space over five missions. “You really did much to ensure success of the expedition”, said Anatoly Ivanishin, commander of Expedition 49.
Shane Kimbrough of NASA and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of Roscosmos are scheduled to launch September 23, US time, from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Williams performed five space strolls, incorporating one alongside Nasa space explorer Kate Rubins to introduce a docking connector for future business Boeing and SpaceX group containers to visit the space station.
Advertisement
Last week, it was announced that Rubins had sequenced DNA in space for the first time.
