The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin awarded Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev the title of Hero of the Russian Federation. This reported by Roscosmos.

“For the bravery and courage shown during the long-term spaceflight award test cosmonaut of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center the title of Hero of the Russian Federation,” reads the document published on the federal legal acts website. The same document awards Sergey Prokopyev the honored title Pilot-Cosmonaut of the Russian Federation.

Sergey Prokopyev performed one 197-day spaceflight as the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft crew commander together with ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor. During the mission, the crew conducted two spacewalks on August 15 and December 18, 2018. During the spacewalk, Sergey Prokopyev together with Oleg Kononenko inspected the International Space Station external surface and Soyuz MS-09 habitation module. This unique and complicated job is surely to enter the history of world cosmonautics.