NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy called agency astronaut Frank Rubio in space earlier this month to celebrate his record-breaking mission aboard the International Space Station.
Astronaut Rubio, who is serving on a year-long mission aboard the orbiting laboratory, surpassed NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei’s U.S. record of 355 days in space as the longest single spaceflight by an American.
When he lands on Earth at the end of the month, Rubio will have 371 days in space.
Frank Rubio launched aboard Soyuz MS-22 on September 21, 2022 and will land in September 2023 with the longest single duration spaceflight for a U.S. astronaut. The Florida native graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1998 and earned a Doctorate of Medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in 2010. Dr. Rubio is a board-certified family physician and flight surgeon.
Prior to attending medical school, he served as a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter pilot and flew more than 1,100 hours, including more than 600 hours of combat and imminent danger time during deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
He was selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. At the time of his selection, he was serving in the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Carson, Colorado.
For more than 22 years, astronauts have continuously lived and worked aboard the space station, testing technologies, performing science, and developing the skills needed to explore farther from Earth. A list of other NASA station astronaut records is available online.
