But there’s a long history of spacefarers who have spent more time than expected in space because of barriers in bringing them back to Earth. (Here’s a brief overview of human spaceflight since 1961.)
The most famous case is that of Sergei Krikalev, a cosmonaut on board the Mir space station during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Krikalev had launched on May 18, 1991, from Baikonur in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan and planned to spend about 150 days on Mir. But the Soviet Union fell apart during his mission, and issues about who would pay for his return kept him in orbit for 311 days—a world record at the time.
Sometimes spacecraft encounter problems while docked at the ISS, as was the case for another extended ISS occupant, American astronaut Frank Rubio. Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts arrived at the ISS on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in September 2022, and they were scheduled to take the same spacecraft back in March 2023.
But the Soyuz developed problems after it was struck by a micrometeoroid—a speck of dust or rock traveling extremely fast—and so Rubio had to catch a ride on a different Soyuz in September later that year.
As a result, Rubio set a new record for the most time continuously spent in space by a NASA astronaut, of 371 days. However, that’s still shy of the overall record: Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov spent 437 consecutive days on board the Mir space station in 1994 and 1995. (Read about how time in space changes astronauts.)
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