Anton Shkaplerov

Anton Nikolaevich Shkaplerov (; born 20 February 1972) is a former Russian cosmonaut. He is a veteran of four spaceflights.

Early life Shkaplerov was born 20 February 1972, in Sevastopol, Crimea. He is married to Tatyana Petrovna, and they have two daughters. His parents are Nikolay Ivanovich Shkaplerov and Tamara Viktorovna Shkaplerova. In 1989, Shkaplerov learned to fly in a Yakovlev Yak-52, and after graduating from Sevastopol High School the same year, he entered the Kachinsk Air Force Pilot School. He graduated in 1994 as a pilot-engineer, and then graduated from N. E. Zukovskiy Air Force Engineering School in 1997. His hobbies include sports, travel, fishing, and golf. They spent 165 days in space before undocking and returning to Earth on 27 April 2012.

Expedition 42/43

On 23 November 2014, Shkaplerov commanded Soyuz TMA-15M alongside flight engineers Samantha Cristoforetti and Terry Virts (along with three Lego minifigure replicas of them) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It successfully docked at the ISS roughly six hours later, and the crew joined the Expedition 42 crew which consisted of commander Barry Wilmore and Flight Engineers Aleksandr Samokutyayev and Yelena Serova. The crew spent 199 days in space before returning to Earth on 11 June 2015. Shkaplerov's total time in space was brought to 365 days.

Expedition 54/55 Shkaplerov was launched on into space on board Soyuz MS-07 on 17 December 2017, with NASA astronaut Scott Tingle and Norishige Kanai of JAXA. He was the flight engineer of Expedition 54 and commander of Expedition 55.

On 2 February 2018, Shkaplerov and Expedition 54 commander Alexander Misurkin participated in an 8-hour 13 minutes spacewalk outside of the ISS to replace an old electronics box for a high-gain communications antenna. At completion, the two cosmonauts set a new record for the longest Russian spacewalk to date.

Expedition 65/66

Shkaplerov flew to the ISS on board Soyuz MS-19 on 5 October 2021 with film director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild, who were filming The Challenge, a joint project of Roscosmos, Channel One and the Yellow, Black and White studio. Shkaplerov appeared in some scenes of the film. Shipenko and Peresild returned to Earth on Soyuz MS-18 with Oleg Novitsky, while Shkaplerov became ISS commander as part of Expedition 66.

On 19 January 2022, he participated in an 7-hour 11 minutes spacewalk to configure the Prichal module to support visiting Soyuz and Progress vehicles.

Shkaplerov landed on 30 March 2022 with Russian cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov and American astronaut Mark Vande Hei.

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