Oleg Artemyev

Personal life and education Artemyev was born in Riga, Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, present-day Latvia, on December 28, 1970, and grew up in Leninsk (now Baikonur), Kazakhstan.

He graduated from the Tallinn Polytechnical School in 1990. In 1998, he graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University with a degree in Low Temperature Technology and Physics. Artemyev graduated from the Russian Academy of State Service under the President of the Russian Federation in 2009, specializing in Personnel Management.

He is married to Anna Sergeevna Malikhova.

Career After his graduation, Artemyev served in the Soviet Army in Vilnius, Lithuania, until 1991. He has worked at RKKE since 1998.

Artemyev also has a personal vlog on YouTube where he films the daily life on the ISS.

MARS-500 Artemyev was a crew member in the 15-day and 105-day precursor studies of the MARS-500 program between 2007 and 2009.

Expedition 39/40 Artemyev was a member of the Expedition 39/40 long-duration International Space Station crew. The mission launched on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on March 25, 2014, and returned to Earth on September 11, 2014.

Expedition 55/56 Artemyev launched on March 21, 2018 as part of Expedition 55/56. He was the commander of Soyuz MS-08. He returned to Earth on October 5, 2018.

Expedition 66/67 Artemyev launched for the third time on March 18, 2022 onboard Soyuz MS-21. He joined the International Space Station Expedition 66 and became part of the Expedition 67 crew. Later in Expedition 67, he assumed command of the International Space Station from NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn on 5 May 2022. He spent 195 days in space before returning to Earth on 29 September 2022 at 10:57 UTC.

During Expedition 67, Artemyev participated in educational and cultural outreach activities aboard the International Space Station, including presenting Mohabishwer Mohakash Fari, a Bengali-language book by Shah Jalal Jonak that was described by media outlets as the first Bengali-language book sent to the ISS.

SpaceX Crew-12 In early 2025, Artemyev was assigned as the backup to Oleg Platonov for the SpaceX Crew-11 mission, with the expectation that he would fly on the Crew-12 mission in early 2026. This assignment made him the first veteran cosmonaut slated to fly on the SpaceX Crew Dragon; all previous Russian crew members on the spacecraft had been first-time spaceflight participants.

In December 2025, about two and a half months before launch, Artemyev was abruptly removed from the Crew-12 mission, with Roscosmos officially citing his "transition to other work". However, the investigative news site The Insider reported that he was expelled from the United States after being accused of violating the International Traffic in Arms Regulations by photographing SpaceX engines, documents, and other technologies with his phone and then using that phone to "export" that information. The alleged violation occurred at SpaceX's Hawthorne, California, facility in late November and prompted an interagency investigation.

Artemyev was replaced by cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, who became the first Russian to fly twice on Crew Dragon, reducing the amount of additional training required.