NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth today along with his Russian counterpart Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko aftr 340 days aboard the International Space Station that had elicited enormous interest in space watch from above and the way night lights ignite new visions of our planet.
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Overall, Kelly has spent a total 520 days in space over four flights.
Kelly could be seen pumping his fist and giving a thumbs up after being hoisted from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that brought the trio back. Kelly and his colleagues’ separation from the International Space Station in the Soyuz craft marks the end of NASA Expedition 46 and the beginning of Expedition 47. “I’ve no idea why you guys are so bundled up”, NASA TV reported him as saying as he sat upright in a chair on the steppe in temperatures just below zero.
The men, accompanied by Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, sealed themselves into a Russian Soyuz capsule that undocked from the orbiting lab before beginning the descent.
NASA admitted that the Mars exploration would be a little bit trickier compared to all the explorations that were done before.
His completed mission may soon pave the way for a trip to Mars.
Soon Scott Kelly will be headed back to Houston, Texas, where he will continue to undergo testing for the One-Year Mission.
During his year in space, Commander Kelly has done everything from science experiments to spacewalks.
Kelly’s identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, has been participating on the ground, providing comparisons that will help study how space changes humans.
“When you go up in space there’s no gravity, so all this fluid shifts upward towards the head and it causes a number of issues for astronauts”, said Brinda Rana, a molecular geneticist at UC San Diego who is involved in two of the 10 research projects.
The American astronaut and former U.S. Navy captain is set to make his return flight to the United States and is expected to arrive in Houston on Wednesday evening. At 4:40 pm ET, the hatch door closes. The mission was created to see how the human body can cope with long periods in space, in preparation for possible missions to Mars. He’ll have plenty of pictures, at least, for the scrapbook – he posted 1,000 dramatic, colour-drenched pictures of Earth on his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
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“In some cases, up to nine months after landing, we’re still acquiring samples of the astronauts – perhaps even longer, as they return to their normal duties and we acquire data from their annual physicals and so forth”, Charles added.
