Alexei Ovchinin

Alexei Nikolayevich Ovchinin was born on 28 September 1971 in Rybinsk, in Russia's Yaroslavl Oblast, growing up in the last decades of the Soviet Union. He trained as a military aviator, graduating from military pilot schools in the early 1990s and going on to serve as a Russian Air Force pilot and instructor, including time at the Yeisk Higher Military Pilot School. By the time he was accepted into the cosmonaut corps he had logged more than 1,300 flight hours in aircraft such as the Yak-52 trainer and the L-39 jet. Roscosmos selected him as a cosmonaut candidate in 2006, and he received his cosmonaut certification in 2009, joining a generation of Russian fliers who would crew the International Space Station through the Soyuz era.

Ovchinin has flown four times. His first spaceflight, Soyuz TMA-20M, launched in March 2016; as commander of the ferry craft he served aboard the ISS for Expeditions 47 and 48, spending roughly 172 days in orbit before returning that September. His second launch became one of the most dramatic episodes in modern spaceflight: on 11 October 2018, Soyuz MS-10 suffered a booster failure moments into ascent, and Ovchinin and NASA's Nick Hague were thrown clear by the escape system in the first crewed Soyuz launch abort in 35 years, landing safely on the Kazakh steppe. Undeterred, he returned to orbit just five months later aboard Soyuz MS-12 in March 2019, flying with Hague and Christina Koch and going on to command Expedition 60. His fourth and most recent flight was Soyuz MS-26, launched in September 2024 alongside Ivan Vagner and NASA veteran Donald Pettit; he took command of Expedition 72 and, together with a long-duration ISS stay, brought his career spaceflight time to well over a year in orbit. He also has spacewalking experience, having ventured outside the station in a Russian Orlan suit.

The MS-10 abort defined Ovchinin's public legacy: the crew's calm survival became a case study in the reliability of the Soyuz escape architecture and helped restore confidence in the vehicle after the failure was traced to a launch-vehicle sensor damaged during assembly. For his courage and his contributions to Russia's human spaceflight program he was named a Hero of the Russian Federation. He remains an active cosmonaut. His most recent mission ended on 19 April 2025 (early 20 April local time), when the Soyuz MS-26 capsule made a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe southeast of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, closing out the Expedition 72 increment and confirming his place among the most experienced fliers of his cohort.