A native of Turkmenistan, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko plans to fly into space for the fifth time. He said this on the air of the program "Evening Urgant" on the First channel of Russian television. Together with him in the program participated testers Nikolai Chub and Anna Kikina "If nothing changes, if everything goes well, because we have a lot of "if", then Anna may fly in the fall of 2022 with me, and Nikolai (Chub-approx. editors) earlier-in the spring of 2022, " - said Kononenko. 

To date, Kikina is the only woman in the Russian cosmonaut squad.

The last time a Russian female cosmonaut was in space was from September 2014 to March 2015. She was Elena Serova, who spent 167 days on the ISS and became the first Russian woman on the International space station and the fourth in the history of manned cosmonautics in the USSR and Russia. Before her, Russian women cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya and Elena Kondakova, who made two flights to orbit-the last in 1997 on the USS Atlantis.

On the air of the program, Oleg Kononenko presented Ivan Urgant with a copy of the Soyuz launch vehicle and told about the difficult work that he had to do in outer space together with Sergei Prokopiev to find out the reason for the appearance of a strange hole in the household compartment of the ship.

– It was a very small hole. It was difficult to find, since it is located on the housing of the household compartment. Behind its wall – a vacuum, its thickness is no more than 2 millimeters. It is covered with a thin anti-meteor protection, in fact – a screen. And this all had to be cut open with a very sharp blade. At some point, I may have hit him with my right hand in the heat of the moment. And if I pierced a glove, then the street in Moscow would already be called by my name, - O. Kononenko told.

Oleg Kononenko, a native of Turmenabat, celebrated his 56th birthday on June 21 this year. President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhayedov congratulated him on his birthday and addressed his best wishes to the test cosmonaut instructor and commander of the cosmonaut detachment Of the state Corporation for space activities Roscosmos.

Recall that the first flight of Oleg Kononenko to the International space station took place in 2008. In total, he made four flights to the space station, and also broke the record for the total time spent on the ISS, spending 737 days in space. And on December 11, 2018, for the fifth time, he went into outer space to survey the skin of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, the duration of the exit is 7 hours and 45 minutes. The total duration of the five spacewalks was 32 hours and 13 minutes.

Oleg Kononenko is a Hero of Russia and Turkmenistan, a recipient of one of the highest awards of independent neutral Turkmenistan – the order of the President's Star, which was awarded to him in 2009 by President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.