Aleksandr "Sasha" Yuriyevich Kaleri is a former Russian cosmonaut and veteran of extended stays on the Mir Space Station and the International Space Station (ISS). Kaleri has most recently been in space in 2010 and 2011 aboard the ISS serving as a flight engineer for the long duration Expedition 25/26 missions. He has spent the fifth-longest time in space of any person, and the longest time in space of any person not born in what is now Russia.
Kaleri participates in a training session at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.
Kaleri inside the Zvezda service module during Expedition 8.
Aleksandr Kaleri wearing an Orlan spacesuit is pictured in the Pirs Docking Compartment.
Mir was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station (ISS) after Mir's orbit decayed. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.
Mir seen from Space Shuttle Endeavour during STS-89 (28 January 1998)
The Travers radar antenna, Sofora girder, VDU thruster block, SPK unit and a Strela crane, alongside Kvant-2 and Priroda
The four solar arrays on Spektr
Reinhold Ewald (right) and Vasily Tsibliyev in the core module during Ewald's visit to Mir
