Frank Rubio winces when he discusses the emotional hardship of being confined for more than in a year in a vessel orbiting Earth, the slightest of breaks in the composure of someone trained as doctor, Army helicopter pilot and NASA astronaut.

A leaking radiator on the Russian spacecraft that brought him to the International Space Station in 2022 extended Rubio’s time there from a planned six months to more than a year. When his son graduated from high school, and throughout his oldest daughter’s first year at college, he wasn’t on this planet. He had deployed to war zones before, but this felt different.

Washington Post