In his second attempt Ivanishin entered the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation School in 1987, and in 1991 graduated with a gold medal.

On October 15, 2021, Roscosmos announced that Ivanishin was retiring from the Cosmonaut training centre to devote most of his time to "scientific activities"[3] Ivanishin served as the Soyuz TMA-20 backup commander, backing up Russian cosmonaut Dimitri Kondratyev for ISS Expedition 26/27, directly holding the position of Expedition 27 backup Commander.

[6] On 16 February 2012, Ivanishin supported a spacewalk by his fellow cosmonauts, Shkaplerov and Kononenko, who performed a six-hour, 15-minute EVA from the Pirs airlock module on the Russian segment of the ISS.

The two set up several experiments on the outside of the station and moved a Strela crane from Pirs to the Poisk module while Burbank and Ivanishin remained inside Soyuz TMA-22 in case of an emergency.

[8] Ivanishin, along with Shkaplerov and Burbank, landed safely in Kazakhstan on 27 April, wrapping up his first spaceflight after 165 days in orbit.

The trio spent two days in orbit testing various new systems on the Soyuz MS spacecraft, before rendezvous and docking with the ISS on 9 July, officially becoming members of the Expedition 48 crew alongside NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka.

[12] Soyuz MS-02 was successfully launched on 19 October 2016, carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko as well as NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough to the station.

The trio successfully arrived in orbit and docked with the ISS six hours later, officially joining the Expedition 62 crew alongside Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Andrew R. Morgan.

[17] The mission was crewed by NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken, who stayed onboard the ISS for two months.