[5] From 16 to 22 June 2008 in Sevastopol he participated in descent vehicle training along with Robert Thirsk (Canada) and Richard Garriott (USA).

[8] During the mission, five astronauts and cosmonauts (Michael Barratt, Jack Fisher, Jeremy Hansen, Paolo Nespoli and Satoshi Furukawa) from different space agencies worked in a multicultural and multi-ethnic team in extreme conditions underground.

In the autumn of 2015, Ovchinin and cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka tasted 160 culinary dishes, designed for astronauts on board the ISS, over an 8-day period.

On 11 October 2018 Ovchinin and Nick Hague boarded Soyuz MS-10 on the way to the International Space Station to join Expedition 57, but the launch was aborted mid-flight due to a booster failure; the crew landed safely after a ballistic descent.

[11][12] During his MS-10 flight, the Soyuz spacecraft aborted at an altitude of around 50 kilometers (31 miles) and reached an apogee of 93 km (58 mi), just short of the Kármán line, before landing 19 minutes and 41 seconds after launch.

[13] Ovchinin launched to the ISS again on 14 March 2019, travelling on Soyuz MS-12 with American astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch.

The trio joined the Expedition 59 crew, along with commander Oleg Kononenko and flight engineers David Saint-Jacques and Anne McClain.