Posted: Aug 16, 2005 09:06 pm EDT
Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev, 46, became the human with the most cumulative time in space early today. At 1:44 a.m. EDT he passed the record of 748 days held by Sergei Avdeyev. Huston called to congratulate him: "Fly on, Sergei," they said. Krikalev joked back in Russian, "You'll have to congratulate me every day from now on."

Krikalev spent his more than two years in space beginning in November 1988 with the start of his first long-duration flight to the Soviet space station Mir. Krikalev did back-to-back increments on his next Mir flight starting in May 1991 and returning to Earth in March 1992. While he was in orbit, the Soviet Union disintegrated and Mir became a Russian space station.

The first Russian to fly a Shuttle mission

He became the first Russian to fly a Shuttle mission on STS-60 in February 1994. His second Shuttle flight took the Unity node to the International Space Station on STS-88 in December 1998. He was a member of the Station's Expedition 1 crew, launching in October 2000 and returning to Earth in March 2001. He launched as commander of Expedition 11 last April 14.

Sergei was born August 27, 1958, in Leningrad and married Elena Terekhina of Samara, Russia. They have one daughter. He enjoys swimming, skiing, bicycle riding, aerobatic flying, and amateur radio operations, particularly from space. Graduated from high school in 1975; in 1981, received mechanical engineering degree from the Leningrad Mechanical Institute, now called St. Petersburg Technical University.

A member of the Russian and Soviet national aerobatic flying teams, he was Champion of Moscow in 1983, and Champion of the Soviet Union in 1986. Krikalev was selected as a cosmonaut in 1985, completed his basic training in 1986, and, for a time, was assigned to the Buran Shuttle program. In early 1988, he began training for his first long-duration flight aboard the MIR space station in 1988. Because arrival of the next crew had been delayed, they prepared the MIR for a period of unmanned operations before returning to Earth on April 27, 1989.

Krikalev is the Commander of Expedition-11 and is living and working aboard the International Space Station on a six-month tour of duty. Expedition-11 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 14, 2005 aboard Soyuz and docked with the ISS on April 16, 2005. Following 8-days of joint operations and handover briefings, they replaced the Expedition-10 crew who returned to earth aboard Soyuz.

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