Oleg Dmitrievich Kononenko was born in Chardzhou, Turkmenistan on June 21, 1964.
He graduated N.E.Zhukovsky Aviation Institute in Kharkov in 1988. From 1988 the future astronaut worked as an engineer and the principal design engineer of the special design engineering bureau Progress in Samara.
On March 20, 1998 he got qualified as a test astronaut.
Oleg Kononenko made his first space flight as the flight engineer of the SOYUZ TMA-12 and the flight engineer of the ISS for 199 days from April 8 to October 24, 2008. He made two space walks for the total time of 12 hours 15 minutes.
He started on his second space flight as the captain of the SOYUZ TMA-03M with European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers and NASA astronaut Don Pettit on December 21, 2011. Oleg Kononenko carried out extravehicular activity for 6 hours and 15 minutes. Landing took place on July 1, 2012, thus the space flight duration made 192 days 18 hours 58 minutes and 37 seconds.
Oleg Kononenko was trained as the commander of the duplicating crew of the SOYUZ TMA-15M and the main crew of SOYUZ TMA-17M, which was launched on July 23, 2015.
AWARDS: in 2009 the astronaut was ranked the Hero of the Russian Federation and awarded the Gold Star medal and the medal Space Pilot of the Russian Federation; he was also conferred the ROSCOSMOS departmental awards, such as tokens of Korolev and Gagarin and decorated with an order of Turkmenistan, as well as the NASA medals.
He is married to Tatyana Mikhailovna Kononenko and has two children. The spaceman is fond of game sports, and reading books.