From 1984, Tyurin was an engineer with the Energiya Rocket and Space Complex, researching the psychological aspects of training cosmonauts to manually control a spacecraft. He was selected as a cosmonaut in 1993. He was part of the third resident crew on the International Space Station (ISS), arriving on Discovery in August 2001 for four months. In September 2006 he flew again to the ISS aboard a Soyuz spacecraft and served as flight engineer on the six-month stay; during the mission he performed five space walks, accumulating 25 hours and 32 minutes of EVA time. Tyurin launched again to the ISS in November 2013; in completing his third space mission, Tyurin has accumulated a total of 532 days in space.