He was commander of the crew that stayed on the Russian space station Mir July–November 1994. In September 2000, he flew with the space shuttle Atlantis mission to prepare the International Space Station (ISS) for its first resident crew. During the mission he undertook a six-hour space walk to connect cables. He was commander of the eighth resident crew on the ISS from 25 April to 27 October 2003. In October 2007 Malenchenko returned to the ISS, where he had a 191-day stay in space. Malenchenko was selected as a cosmonaut in 1993 and retired in 2016. He accumulated a total of 827 days in space—slightly less than Gennady Padalka’s 878 days in orbit. His five space walks have totalled 30 hours.