Sergei Krikalev

Sergei Krikalev

Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev (Russian: Сергей Константинович Крикалёв, also transliterated as Sergei Krikalyov, born August 27, 1958) is a Russian cosmonaut and mechanical engineer. As a prominent rocket scientist, he is a veteran of six space flights and currently has spent more time in space than any other human being.

On August 16, 2005 at 1:44 a.m. EDT he passed the record of 748 days held by Sergei Avdeyev. He now has spent a total of 803 days and 9 hours and 39 minutes in space.

Krikalev was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. He enjoys swimming, skiing, cycling, aerobatic flying, and amateur radio operations, particularly from space (callsigns U5MIR and X75M1K).

On February 15, 2007, Krikalev was appointed Vice President of the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (Russian: Ракетно-космическая корпорация "Энергия" им. С.П.Королева) in charge of manned space flights. In that capacity, he is the administrator of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center.

Krikalev was dubbed by many "the last Citizen of the USSR". He spent 10 months aboard the Mir space station from May 1991 through March 1992 as the dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred. These events are documented and contextualized in Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică's groundbreaking 1995 documentary Out of the Present. A fictional account of how Krikalev may have felt about this is described in the song "Casiopea", written by Cuban songwriter Silvio Rodríguez.

Although "Krikalyov" may be a more accurate phonetic transliteration, "Krikalev" is more common and is used in the NASA and Energia biographies of him.

Read more about Sergei Krikalev:  Education, Special Honors, Missions