The lengthy sojourn was part of NASA’s One-Year Mission, an experiment on the effects of long stays in space on the human body.
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“Those of us who dream of sending astronauts to deep space thank Scott Kelly for his sacrifice”, said Jim Green, director of planetary science for NASA, “and are thrilled to welcome him home”.
USA astronaut Scott Kelly was scheduled to return to Earth late Tuesday after 340 days aboard the International Space Station.
Since last March’s blastoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the 52-year-old Kelly has circled the planet more than 5,400 times, seen more than 10,800 orbital sunrises and sunsets, and put 144 million miles on his cosmic odometer.
Kelly will also hold the record for the American who has spent the most total number of days in space, at 540.
“Our studies will provide important data on how the space environment impacts the human body at the molecular level so that NASA can identify risk factors and countermeasures for possible health issues induced by prolonged space travel, such as a mission to Mars“, said Rana.
Scott Kelly during a spacewalk in which Kelly and Flight Engineer Tim Kopra successfully moved the International Space Station’s mobile transporter rail auto ahead of a docking of a Russian cargo supply spacecraft, December 21, 2015.
You can watch Kelly’s return on this NASA live stream below.
“Essentially there are specific dates where the station and therefore the Soyuz will cross over specific parts of the Earth (Kazakhstan) which allow you to line up for the usual landing and recovery zones”, Huot told Mashable via email.
At 8:02 pm ET, the Soyuz spacecraft carrying Scott Kelly, Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov will undock from the ISS.
Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov looks out the Russian space station Mir’s window during his record-setting 438-day mission from 1994 to 1995.
But Kelly and Kornienko will face all that and then some.
Asked how Kelly and Kornienko might feel returning to gravity after 340 days aloft, Williams said he was confident Kelly had “done a good job of maintaining his fitness while he was up there and he’ll do just fine coming back”. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a former astronaut who spent six days in orbit aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1986, said in a statement.
In addition to breaking the record of uninterrupted time in space for an American, Kelly will also have logged 520 cumulative days in space over four flights, surpassing the previous record of 382 days by astronaut Mike Fincke.
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NASA needs to know a lot more about these changes to the body before it can send people to Mars or on any other long spaceflights.
