[citation needed] Volkov graduated from Star City high school in 1990 and entered the Tambov Air Force Academy for Pilots.

From August 2001 to February 2003, Volkov trained as part of the Expedition 7 backup crew as a Soyuz-TMA Commander and ISS Flight Engineer.

The Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft carrying Volkov along with fellow cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and South Korean spaceflight participant Yi So-Yeon blasted into space on 8 April 2008.

As with prior expeditions, many experiments are designed to gather information about the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body, which will help us understand complicated processes such as immune systems with a plan for future exploration missions.

An EVA by Volkov and crewmate Aleksandr Samokutyayev occurred on 3 August 2011 to move a small crane, install a communications terminal and remove and inspect antennas.

An EVA by Volkov and crewmate Aleksandr Samokutyayev occurred on 3 August 2011 to move a small crane, install a communications terminal and remove and inspect antennas.

The spacewalkers performed works with the experiment Test at two locations: they took away samples from the outer surface of the docking compartment Pirs hatch and in the area of the cover window #8 at the service module Zvezda.

For more convenient travel on the outer surface of the ISS the spacewalkers installed handrails on the soft part of the conical device of the Functional Cargo Block Zarya.

Upon completion of the main tasks, the cosmonauts started a photo documentation of the external surface of the ISS Russian segment.

He and cosmonaut Aleksandr Samokutyayev worked for six hours and 23 minutes performing a variety of tasks for both science and maintenance outside the Russian segment of the ISS.

The cosmonauts removed an antenna that helped guide the Poisk module to a docking in November 2009 and was returned to the ISS at the end of the spacewalk.

Finally, Volkov and Samokutyayev took more photographs holding photos of the first cosmonaut Yury Gagarin, spacecraft designer Sergei Korolyov and Soviet astronautic theory pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky with Earth in the background before entering the Pirs module, closing the hatch and completing the Russian EVA #28.

[citation needed] In February 2012, the Russian Government excluded the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center from the list of organizations served by military officers.

Sergey Volkov successfully sued the training center, winning back 1,382,000 Russian roubles (approximately $40,000) in lost pay.

[1] Volkov launched for his third trip to the ISS as commander of Soyuz TMA-18M alongside visiting crew members Andreas Mogensen and Aidyn Aimbetov on 2 September 2015.

They docked to the Poisk Module 2 days later (a higher station orbit prevented the normal 6 hr rendezvous from being possible) on 4 September.