He was born into a soldier's family and lived in Nevinnomyssk in the North Caucasus, in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Russian Far East and in Zaporizhia in Soviet Ukraine.

Skripochka entered the Bauman Moscow State Technical University after graduating from high school in Zaporizhia in 1987.

Skripochka was a member (Flight Engineer) of the ISS Expedition 25/26, that was launched on 7 October 2010 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, aboard Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft, together with cosmonaut Aleksandr Kaleri and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly.

During their mission, Skripochka and the rest of the Expedition 25/26 crew participated in a wide array of research, including fundamental physics, biometric experiments and investigations of crystal growth in space, as well as education outreach.

At one point in his live landing commentary, NASA spokesman Rob Navias said "You would think that was a scene out of the North Pole," to explain the extreme climatic conditions.

[8] On 15 November 2010, Skripochka participated in a spacewalk with fellow Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 25 Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin.

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

[12] During the second spacewalk (Russian EVA #27), conducted on 21 January 2011, Skripochka and cosmonaut Dmitri Kondratyev focused to complete installation of a new high-speed data transmission system.

Skripochka also wore a NASA-provided wireless television camera system and helmet lights to provide live point-of-view video to Mission Control-Moscow.

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.