NASA has a
new spaceflight champion in astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who is setting a
new record aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the longest mission
by a U.S. spaceflyer.
As of
Tuesday, Lopez-Alegria
has lived and worked aboard the space station for more than 197 days and
counting, breaking NASA's previous record of 196 days set in 2002 by Expedition
4 astronauts Carl Walz and Dan Bursch. By the time Lopez-Alegria returns to
Earth on April 20 with crewmate Mikhail Tyurin, a cosmonaut with Russia's
Federal Space Agency, they will have spent 214 days in space since their
September 2006 launch.
ISS flight
controllers congratulated Lopez-Alegria, who commands the space station's
Expedition 14 crew, as he hit the 197-day mark, though the veteran spaceflyer
said he doesn't expect the title to stick.
"You know
it's kind of being like Barry Bonds and...Albert Pujos playing on the same team,"
Lopez-Alegria, an avid
baseball fan, said referring to professional ballplayers. "I have a feeling
my record isn't going to last very long, and I know exactly who is going to break
it."
Lopez-Alegria
was referring to fellow NASA astronaut
Sunita Williams, an Expedition 14 flight engineer, who will stay aboard the
ISS after to join the station's Expedition 15 crew after he and Tyurin return
to Earth. Williams is due to return to Earth aboard NASA's space shuttle
Endeavour in July, though the delayed launch of next shuttle flight - STS-117
aboard Atlantis - will delay the astronaut's homecoming until later this
summer. By mid-July, she will surpass Lopez-Alegria's 214-day record for NASA's
longest continuous spaceflight.
"Your glory
days in the hot sun may not last long," flight controllers told Lopez-Alegria.
But with 10
spacewalks and more than 67 hours of spacewalking time - half of it
performed during Expedition 14 - under his belt, Lopez-Alegria still tops
NASA's list as the most experienced U.S. spacewalker. Williams too, with four
spacewalks and more 27 hours during Expedition 14, holds the title for the most
spacewalks performed by a female astronaut.
The world
record for the longest single spaceflight is held by Russian cosmonaut Valery
Polyakov, who spent 438 days in space aboard Russia's
Mir Space Station between 1994 and 1995.
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