On June 20, 1999 Avdeyev became the worlds most experienced space traveler, breaking the record with 679.7 days in space over his eight-year cosmonaut career.

Polyakov spent the most consecutive days in space, at 437.7. Mir is expected to burn up on reentry before Avdeyev will be able to break that one.

Other notable record holders include:

• Most experienced spacewalker: Anatoly Solovyov 74 hours 41 minutes, in 15 spacewalks.
• Shortest-duration orbital flight: Yuri Gagarin, one orbit 89.3 minutes. Gagarin was the first human in space. He parachuted from his craft after it reentered Earths atmosphere.
• Fastest piloted spacecraft: Apollo 10 28,547 statute miles (45,941 kilometers) per hour. This set the world's all-time speed record. The mission made Eugene Cernan, Thomas Stafford, and John Young the fastest-moving humans ever. The phenomenal speed was reached upon the crafts reentry into Earth's atmosphere returning from a lunar orbital shakedown mission to test the Apollo spacecraft before a landing was attempted.
• Greatest distance from Earth for a piloted spacecraft: Apollo 13 250,000 miles (402,325 kilometers) from Earth. This record was made during an aborted lunar-landing mission in 1970 that required an emergency return trip.