On 24 February 1998, Kornienko was selected as a test cosmonaut candidate and, in 1999, following basic training at the
Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, he was qualified as a test cosmonaut. Since 1999, he has trained in the
International Space Station group. He served on the ISS
Expedition 8 backup crew as a flight engineer. In 2005, he was assigned to the Soyuz TMA-10 and
Expedition 15 back-up crew as
Flight Engineer 1.
Expedition 23/24 Kornienko was aboard the space station as a Flight Engineer, being part of the
Expedition 23/
24 crew. He lifted off on 2 April 2010, along with fellow Russian cosmonaut
Aleksandr Skvortsov and NASA astronaut
Tracy Caldwell-Dyson aboard
Soyuz TMA-18 from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome. Ending Expedition 24, the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft carrying Mikhail Kornienko, Alexander Skvortsov and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson undocked from the space station at 10:02 pm EDT on 24 September 2010. Following a normal descent, the Soyuz crew landed at 5:23 am GMT ear Arkalyk, Kazakhstan on 25 September. After returning to Earth and sharing his experiences to an audience, Kornienko said "The thing you miss there most of all is the Earth itself, I missed smells. I missed trees, I even dreamt of them. I even hallucinated. I thought I smelled a real fire and something being barbecued on it! I ended up putting pictures of trees on the walls to cheer up. You do miss the Earth there".
Spacewalks On 27 July 2010, Kornienko and fellow Russian cosmonaut
Fyodor Yurchikhin participated in a spacewalk outside the ISS. The two cosmonauts on 23 July put on their Orlan spacesuits and performed a dry run of the spacewalk activities. From inside the Pirs docking compartment they checked out the Orlan systems, practiced translation movements and tested their mobility. During the spacewalk, Kornienko and Yurchikhin outfitted the Rassvet module's (MRM1) Kurs automated rendezvous system, installed cables and remove and replaced a video camera. The spacewalk began at 04:11 UTC as Kornienko and Yurchikhin donned in Orlan spacesuits, depressurized the internal volume of the Pirs docking compartment airlock and ventured outside into space. It was the 25th Russian spacewalk performed from the station. At one point around 06:45 UTC the two spacewalkers accidentally lost an unidentified object that floated away from their perch on the side of the ISS. The cosmonauts speculated that the lost item was an attachment fixture to secure the cables in place once they are installed. About an hour later, another unidentified item, appeared to be a washer accidentally floated off. The spacewalk lasted six hours and 42 minutes.
ISS year long mission In November 2012,
NASA, the
Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and their international partners selected two veteran spacefarers for a one-year mission aboard the
International Space Station in 2015. This mission included collecting scientific data important to future human exploration of the
Solar System. NASA selected
Scott Kelly, and Roscosmos chose Mikhail Kornienko. Kelly and Kornienko launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan in March 2015 and landed on 1 March 2016 at 22:00. Kelly and Kornienko already have a connection; Kelly was a backup crew member for the station's Expedition 23/24 crews, where Kornienko served as a flight engineer. The goal of their yearlong expedition aboard the orbiting laboratory was to understand better how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space. Data from the 12-month expedition will help inform current assessments of crew performance and health and will determine better and validate countermeasures to reduce the risks associated with future exploration as NASA plans for missions around the Moon, an asteroid and ultimately Mars. ==Film==