He graduated from high school No. 2 in the city of Rybinsk. From August 1988 to September 1990 he was a cadet of Borisoglebsk Higher Military Pilot School and, from September 1990 to August 1992, a student of the Yeisk Higher Military Pilot School where he qualified as a pilot-engineer. From August 1992 to February 1998 he served as a pilot instructor in the Training Aviation Regiment at Yeisk Higher Military Pilot School. From February 1998 to September 2003 he was a pilot instructor, then commander of the aviation section of Krasnodar Military Aviation Institute in Kotelnikovo. From September 2003, until his enrollment as a cosmonaut, he served as a commander of an aviation unit of the 70th Separate Test Training Aviation Regiment of Special Purpose. He has over 1300 hours flying time in Yak-52 and L-39 aircraft. Ovchinin is qualified as a Pilot Instructor Second Class. By order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation in 2012 he was dismissed from the Armed Forces into reserve.
Cosmonaut career
On October 11, 2006 – at the meeting of the Interdepartmental Commission for the selection of cosmonauts – he was recommended as a cosmonaut candidate at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. From 16 to 22 June 2008 in Sevastopol he participated in descent vehicle training along with Robert Thirsk and Richard Garriott. The training was specifically for landing on water. On June 9, 2009 he qualified as a "test cosmonaut" and was presented with Cosmonaut Certificate No. 205. On August 1, 2009 he was appointed as a test cosmonaut of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. In October 2009, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, he participated in training in the Mini Research Module. In April 26, 2010 he was certified as a cosmonaut of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center NII FGBU detachment. In September 2013, he took part in the CAVES mission in the Sa Grutta caves on the island of Sardinia. During the mission, five astronauts and cosmonauts from different space agencies worked in a multicultural and multi-ethnic team in extreme conditions underground. He trained as a part of the backup crew for Soyuz TMA-16M, the launch of which took place on 27 March 2015. 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. Food was evaluated on a 9-point scale.
Expedition 47/48
Ovchinin launched to space on his first flight as the commander of Soyuz TMA-20M which launched on March 18, 2016 21:26 UTC, to join the International Space Station as part of Expedition 47/48. He returned to Earth with his crew mates on September 7, 2016 after 172 days on orbit.
On October 11, 2018, Ovchinin and Nick Hague boarded Soyuz MS-10 on the way to the InternationalSpace 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. During his MS-10 flight, the Soyuz spacecraft aborted at an altitude of around and reached an apogee of, just short of the Kármán line, before landing 19 minutes and 41 seconds after launch.
