The West Orange native who embarked on a yearlong mission in March to the global Space Station broke the record Friday of 382 days held by fellow astronaut Mike Fincke with still a few months left on his extraterrestrial trip.
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Aside from Kelly’s new US record for longest time in outer space, he appears to be bound to set another record in the near future. Scientists are also carrying out parallel studies on Earth, and here the man studied is Mark Kelly, Scott Kelly’s identical twin brother.
Waking up hundreds of miles above the Himalayas, astronaut Scott Kelly broke the USA record Friday for the most time spent in space with 383 days.
NASA mission scientists face many problems and challenges when it comes to manned flights to Mars which can take more than a year of deep space flight to reach the Red Planet. On October. 29, he will break the record for single longest spaceflight by an American astronaut with 216 consecutive days in space.
This isn’t the only record the astronaut will break while on his journey. That’s still nearly a year short of Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka’s world record of a cumulative 878 days in space. According to NASA, Kelly has completed the feat after hitting the space for a total of 4 missions. Strengthening worldwide partnerships will be key in taking humans deeper into the solar system.
“The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling, and psychological benefits”, Gioia Massa, NASA payload scientist for Veggie at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said in a statement.
Kelly is not the only human breaking records for time in space. He came back to Earth on September 12 and right now the total number of days spent by Padalka in space is 878.
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November 2 will mark the 15th anniversary of continuous human presence on the global Space Station.
