“It’s an unbelievable feeling to be back here on planet Earth, back in our country, with my family and my friends”, Kelly says. Kelly’s 340 days stay on board the ISS set two records- first for the most consecutive days spent in space by an American; and for the most days spent cumulatively among U.S. astronauts, at 520, which he accumulated across two flights.
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US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth on Wednesday after spending nearly a year in space in a ground breaking experiment foreshadowing a potential manned mission to Mars. “I have been there a long time so I looked forward to leaving, but on at the same time, it is a magnificent place”, Kelly said.
Kelly is the America’s first astronaut to spend a full year in space. “I don’t mean to say it’s not fresh on the space station”, he said, “but there’s nothing like new cold air coming into the capsule”. It’s the longest any US astronaut has been in space. On Thursday, July 16, 2015, a piece of space junk forced the three International Space Station astronauts, including Kelly, to seek emergency shelter in their Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station, in case they had to make a quick getaway.
President Obama called Kelly Wednesday to welcome him back to Earth and to thank him for “inspiring a new generation of young people” to pursue careers in math and sciences.
“Astronauts get taller in space as the spine elongates”, Williams said. Kelly posted hundreds of photos of Earth.
“It was you know, leaving the space station, it was a bittersweet”.
Waiting for Kelly, 52, in Houston were his two daughters and girlfriend, along with his identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, and his sister-in-law, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
According to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Kelly’s year-long stay on the ISS has helped advance their research on deep space exploration as well as in their preparation for the planned journey to Mars.
This was not “his” successful mission said the astronaut. He said that what he did up there for a year helping NASA learn more about what it will take to travel to the planets, is not his achievement.
Commander Kelly explained: “We go through about an hour of field tests of various kinds – one is even like an obstacle course, where you run around, stand up from a sitting position and jump”.
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She brought him a gift of beer from President Barack Obama and some apple pie.
