

NASA

NASA



NASA

NASA



NASA

Without much fanfare, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson will return to Earth on Saturday night—it will be Sunday morning on the steppes of Kazakhstan—aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. Quietly, she will have spent 288 days in space, or nearly 10 months. The duration of her spaceflight will fall short of only one other US astronaut, Scott Kelly, who returned to Earth in 2016 with a lot more attention after 340 days.

Whitson is known around NASA's Johnson Space Center as perhaps the agency's most efficient astronaut in space, regularly getting ahead of her timelines, research, and maintenance tasks for each day. Mission controllers typically have to come up with extra work. Partly because of this, she is one of only a handful of NASA astronauts to have been selected to serve three rotations on the International Space Station.

As a result of these three long duration spaceflights, the biochemist has now logged 665 days in space. This cumulative time in space easily ranks her as the American flier with the most experience in orbit, far above the 534 days tallied by NASA's Jeff Williams and 520 days of Scott Kelly. Whitson only lags behind seven Russian men, several of whom spent time both on the International Space Station as well as Russia's Mir station.

Those aren't all of her accolades, either. In 2008, Whitson became the first female commander of the International Space Station. She is also the oldest woman, aged 57, to fly. And with 10 spacewalks totaling more than 60 hours, she ranks as the third most accomplished spacewalker. Only Russian Anatoly Solovyev and NASA's Michael Lopez-Alegria have spent more time outside their spacecraft.

Some of these records were only made possible because, to save money, the Russians decided to begin launching fewer crew members to the station in 2017. (Fewer Russian crew meant the need for fewer Russian supply ships). Whitson had been originally scheduled to fly back to Earth this spring, but to maintain a three-person presence on board after June 2, NASA and the Russians agreed to extend Whitson’s mission. That kept three crew on board for almost two months to handle research and maintenance before a July launch restored the station's full six-crew complement. For Whitson, no problem.

It is not clear what Whitson will do upon returning to Earth. All NASA astronauts have a lifetime radiation allotment, after which they're not allowed to fly again. Whitson has almost certainly met or exceeded this, so she is unlikely to fly again. Regardless, it seems likely that her duration records will hold up for a very long time.

Listing image by NASA