Mikhail Kornienko – Russian Cosmonaut

Way back in 1975, two orbiting spacecraft met above earth in a historic embrace and cosmonaut Alexey Leonov of Soyuz 19 and the Apollo astronaut Thomas Stafford shook hands in space while millions of people watch on television. Four decades later, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and the United States Scott Kelly not only reprised the gesture but took it to another level, after working together for 340 days aboard the International Space Station.

During their time together in space, they traveled 144 million miles, circles the earth more than 5000 times and did over 400 scientific experiments. All this to expand upon the understanding of space’s impact on human beings and when it comes to exploring space there are no borders that exist between people in space.

The data collected by Kornienko and others will be used to help crew health in space and will help determine all the risks associated with future space travel to the moon, asteroids, or even Mars. In 2016, Kornienko was named as one of the 50 most influential people in the world according to Fortune magazine’s annual survey.

The masculine name Mikhail is the Russian form of Micheal, which is taken from the Hebrew name Mikha’el that means “who is like God?” However, this rhetorical question implies that no person is like god. The name Mikhail is also a variant transcription of the Bulgarian name Mihail, which is a Bulgarian, Romanian and Macedonian version of Micheal. The name Mihail is also a variant transcription of the Greek name Michail another version of Micheal.