Who is Pyotr Dubrov and what is his role on the ISS
Pyotr Dubrov is a Russian cosmonaut with Roscosmos, born on January 30, 1978. He is flying as a flight engineer on Expedition 75 of the International Space Station, his second mission aboard the orbital laboratory. He's no stranger to the ISS: his first flight, in 2021, made him one of the protagonists of one of the longest single stays in the history of the space program.
A full year in orbit: his first mission
During his first mission, which began in 2021, Dubrov remained more than a year straight aboard the ISS, logging over 371 days in space on a single flight. That is far longer than a standard expedition, which typically runs around six months, and it places Dubrov among the small group of astronauts and cosmonauts who have spent more than 300 consecutive days in orbit. During that mission he also carried out four spacewalks (EVAs), working outside the station on maintenance and equipment installation tasks.
Spending more than a year straight in microgravity is a significant physical challenge: without Earth's gravity, bones and muscles progressively lose density and mass, the cardiovascular system adapts to an environment without the usual effort of pumping blood against gravity, and balance and motor coordination suffer. Long-duration missions like this one are exactly what space agencies most want to study, since they show how the human body behaves ahead of future long-distance trips, such as a mission to Mars.
His career as a cosmonaut
Dubrov was selected by Roscosmos as a cosmonaut on October 8, 2012, as part of a group of eight candidates chosen that year. In 2020 he was assigned to the backup crew of the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft, serving as backup for Russian cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, a flight engineer on ISS Expedition 63/64, before flying to the station himself the following year.
His career by the numbers
💡 Fun fact: flights lasting more than a year straight are extremely rare — only a handful of astronauts and cosmonauts in the entire history of the ISS have completed one. Each of these missions provides unique data on the long-term effects of microgravity, information that today directly feeds into the planning of future long-duration missions beyond Earth orbit.
More on his full biography at Wikipedia.
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