Ivan Vagner

Ivan Viktorovich Vagner was born on 10 July 1985 in the settlement of Severoonezhsk in Russia's Arkhangelsk Oblast, part of a generation of cosmonauts who came to spaceflight through engineering rather than the military-pilot route. He trained as an aeronautical engineer and worked at Klimov JSC before joining RSC Energia, the storied prime contractor for Russian crewed spacecraft, where he served as an assistant flight manager on the International Space Station program. That vantage point—supporting the very missions he would later fly—gave him an intimate working knowledge of station operations. Roscosmos selected him as a cosmonaut candidate in October 2010, and he spent the following years completing the demanding qualification path for long-duration ISS flight.

Vagner has flown two long-duration missions. His first, Soyuz MS-16, launched on 9 April 2020 in the tense opening weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic; flying as a flight engineer alongside commander Anatoli Ivanishin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, he served aboard the ISS for Expeditions 62 and 63, spending roughly 196 days in orbit before returning that October. His second flight was Soyuz MS-26, which launched in September 2024 carrying Vagner, commander Alexei Ovchinin, and NASA's Donald Pettit; after a rapid same-day rendezvous, Vagner served as a flight engineer through the Expedition 71 and 72 increments, contributing to the station's continuous program of scientific research, maintenance, and technology demonstrations across a stay of roughly 220 days.

In 2022, by presidential decree, Vagner was named a Hero of the Russian Federation—one of the country's highest honorary titles—recognizing the courage he displayed during his first long-duration expedition. He remains an active member of the Roscosmos cosmonaut corps. His most recent mission concluded on 19 April 2025 (early 20 April local time), when the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft touched down under parachute near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, returning him, Ovchinin, and Pettit to Earth after the Expedition 72 tour. Now a two-flight veteran with well over a year of cumulative time in space, Vagner represents the engineer-cosmonaut tradition that has kept the Russian segment of the ISS operating throughout the station's second decade.