It will be a quick turnaround, however, for the remaining crew of the ISS, with NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka scheduled to join the ESA’s Tim Peake and others onboard on 18 March.
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Scott Kelly’s pioneering year of living at the International Space Station came to an end Tuesday after the American astronaut got inside a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and headed back to Earth. The Russian Soyuz capsule carrying both astronauts and crew member Sergey Volkov parachuted down on to a steppe near the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan.
Scott Kelly, NASA’s first and only year-long man, gave his final conference on the International Space Station recently.
Kelly’s safe trip home sets a new out-of-this world record for American astronauts, and he joins a long list of those who have contributed to NASA’s ongoing mission to explore space.
Kelly and Kornienko specifically participated in a number of studies – including research into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and the stress of long-duration spaceflight.
Kelly and Kornienko’s One-Year mission was principally meant to provide detailed information on how the human body reacts to an extended period in space.
Monday saw Kelly will hand over command of the ISS to his Nasa colleague Timothy Kopra. “Leaving the space station was bittersweet – I had been there for a long time and looked forward to leaving, but it is a remarkable place”.
Kelly also promised to keep a personal journal of his experience on the space station and said that he might share it with us.
It was just above freezing on a desolate plain in Kazakhstan, but Scott Kelly didn’t mind.
Kelly’s year-long experiment has been fruitful scientifically speaking.
“Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who was launched to the space station with Kelly last March 27, said he especially enjoyed feeling fresh air on his face after almost a year in space”.
Over four flights, Kelly’s total time in space now stands at 520 days, making him the most experienced US astronaut and moving him up to 17th in the world.
Kelly, like most astronauts, was a prolific photographer during his time in orbit.
“A really smart person said to me one time, ‘Teamwork makes the dreamwork in spaceflight, ‘ and spaceflight is the biggest team sport there is”.
The Soyuz has undocked from the International Space Station and will begin the journey back to Earth.
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The research is meant to help the USA space agency and its partners develop plans for eventual human missions to Mars that will last at least two years.
