His second was a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as a flight engineer for Expedition 15; for this mission he was launched in the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft.

In April 2017, Yurchikhin launched on Soyuz MS-04 for the fifth spaceflight of his career, a six-month mission to the ISS as part of Expedition 51 and 52, for which he was the commander.

[5] After graduating from the S. Ordzhonikidze Moscow Aviation Institute, Yurchikhin worked at the Russian Space Corporation Energia from September 1983 until August 1997.

STS-112 was the first shuttle mission to use a camera on the External Tank, providing a live view of the launch to flight controllers and NASA TV viewers.

His flight began on April 7, when he launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, aboard Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft, together with Oleg Kotov and space tourist Charles Simonyi.

On 16 June 2010, Yurchikhin along with NASA astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Shannon Walker lifted off aboard the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

During his second long stay aboard the ISS, Yurhikhin participated in two spacewalks in support of station's maintenance and staging new experiments in the exterior of the orbiting complex.

Soyuz TMA-19 carrying the trio of Yurchikhin, Wheelock and Walker undocked from the space station at 01:23:13 UTC[11] After a nominal descent, the Soyuz TMA-19 descent module landed on the central steppes of Kazakhstan at 04:46 UTC[12][13] After the successful landing, Yurchikhin headed for Star City – the home of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia.

For a short time Yurchikhin was commander to a crew of nine, after the docking of Soyuz TMA-11M on 7 November 2013, with four astronaut corps represented between the nine crewmembers (Roscosmos, NASA, ESA, JAXA).

He and fellow cosmonaut Oleg Kotov performed a five-hour and 25 minute spacewalk, during which they installed protective panels to shield ISS from space debris.

[22] During the spacewalk, Yurchikhin and Anderson removed and jettisoned the Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS), installed a television camera stanchion, reconfigured a power supply for an antenna assembly, and performed several get-ahead tasks.

During the spacewalk (Russian EVA #25), Yurchikhin and Kornienko outfitted the Rassvet module's (MRM-1) Kurs automated rendezvous system, installed cables and remove and replaced a video camera.

They performed an experiment called Test, which is aimed at verifying the existence of microorganisms or contamination underneath insulation on the Russian segment of the ISS.

The two spacewalkers exited the Space Station's Pirs docking compartment with the primary goal of preparing for the addition of a new Russian module.

[29] The Orlan-MK space suits of Yurchikhin and Misurkin were equipped with NASA helmet cameras to provide close-up views of their work.

They also installed clamps for future power cables as an early step toward swapping the Pirs airlock with the new Nauka module planned to launch in 2021.

The cable work outside the station was to prepare the ISS for the planned arrival of the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) – Nauka.

The spacewalk ended at seven hours, 29 minutes when the cosmonauts closed the Pirs docking compartment hatch and re-entered the space station.

However, the record held by Yurchikhin and Misurkin was soon eclipsed by cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky when they performed an eight hours, seven minutes spacewalk on 27 December 2013.

Yurchikhin and Misurkin removed an External Onboard Laser Communications System, installed on the Zvezda module during an earlier spacewalk in August 2011.

Initially, Russian mission controllers advised Yurchikhin and Misurkin to stand down on the installation operations, due to a misaligned base plate issue in the camera platform.