A record-breaking cosmonaut will head the Cosmonaut Training Center.

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko will be appointed acting head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center beginning November 10, 2025. Maxim Kharlamov, who has held this post since 2021, is stepping down at his own request.

A graduate and honors student of the Tambov Higher Military Order of Lenin, Red Banner Aviation Engineering School named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky, Maxim Kharlamov joined the Cosmonaut Training Center as an assistant to the lead engineer in 1989.

For many years, he was involved in planning and organizing the training of cosmonauts, Russian and international crews of the Mir orbital complex and the ISS, developing the Center's training facilities, and carrying out research and development work.

Kharlamov graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of International Business at the All-Russian Academy of Foreign Trade in 2006, the Yury Gagarin Air Force Academy in 2008, and the Russian Presidential Academy of Public Administration in 2011. In 2018, he successfully defended his dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Sciences (PhD) in Economics. He is the author of over 50 scientific publications.

Over time, having mastered the intricacies of the work and demonstrated his leadership skills, he assumed the leadership position of deputy head of the department. And in 2021, following the departure of his immediate supervisor, Yuri Vlasov, Maxim Mikhailovich took over.

In recent years at the Cosmonaut Training Center, he led the design, development, and creation of simulators for the prospective Russian orbital station (ROS), as well as the training of cosmonauts for work on the ROS.

For his outstanding achievements, Maxim Kharlamov was awarded the Medal of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland," 2nd Class, in 2000, and the Order of Honor in 2009. He also holds departmental awards from Roscosmos, the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, and the Foreign Intelligence Service.

Oleg Kononenko, a first-class instructor-test cosmonaut, the 473rd cosmonaut in the world, the 102nd cosmonaut of the Russian Federation, a Hero of the Russian Federation, and a full holder of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland," will assume the acting position of head of the Cosmonaut Training Center after Kharlamov's departure on November 10. He has completed five space flights and surpassed Gennady Padalka's world record for total time spent in space. Today, he is one of the most experienced cosmonauts in the world, with a record flight time of 1,110 days, 14 hours, and 57 minutes.

One of his riskiest missions in space was a nearly eight-hour spacewalk outside the ISS in 2018 to investigate the emergency declared on August 30, 2018, following the station's depressurization. The 54-year-old Kononenko and his 43-year-old cosmonaut partner, Sergei Prokopyev, were tasked with using robotic arms to reach the exterior of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft docked to the station. They were tasked with opening its skin and verifying that the hole someone had drilled (Roscosmos has yet to fully disclose this secret to the public) had come from the inside, not the outside.

It took Oleg and Sergey almost four hours—from 7:00 PM to 10:43 PM—just to "ride" the manipulator arms. Then they began to move: first from the Pirs module to the Zarya functional cargo block, and from there to the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft. During the move, as the ISS was flying over North Africa, the cosmonauts were caught in a shadow for about 20 minutes, but they continued working. As a reminder, this was the first time this operation had been performed in the ISS's history.

Like two surgeons, two Russian cosmonauts opened up layer after layer on the Soyuz MS-09: first the heat shield, then the aluminum shield. This was an emergency extravehicular activity (EVA) related to an air leak. It turned out to be caused by a hole behind the ASU (the sewage disposal and sanitary device on the Soyuz MS-09). The hole had been drilled (and not on the first try) and then covered with a fabric curtain. The cosmonauts managed to stop the leak by sealing it with a special sealant.

Afterward, Oleg Kononenko flew into space one more time and was subsequently appointed commander of the cosmonaut corps and deputy head of the Cosmonaut Training Center for cosmonaut training. Kononenko was one of the leading contenders for the post of head of the Cosmonaut Training Center in 2021, but since he still had a space flight planned, Maxim Kharlamov took over.