Although the trip was not quite a year – NASA gained a lot of valuable information from the pair’s 340 days in space and are gearing up for more one-year trials before human expeditions head to Mars in the 2030s.
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Six months is the typical space station stint; that was the mission length for Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, who piloted Kelly and Kornienko to a safe Soyuz touchdown. “I’d been there a long time, so I looked forward to leaving”. The almost year-long mission was meant to provide important data concerning the effects of space on the human body. His identical twin, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, offered himself up as a medical guinea pig so researchers could study the differences between the genetic doubles, one in space and the other on the ground. This information should help mission planners map out future crewed journeys to Mars, NASA officials have said. It’s the longest any US astronaut has been in space.
Astronaut Scott Kelly and his twin brother used to be the same height.
After landing, the latest one-year space subjects quickly parted company, Kelly flying back to Houston and Kornienko to Star City, Russia, near Moscow.
“When I left here in February I was 50 and now I’m 52”.
During a change-of-command ceremony aboard the space station Monday, Kelly said teamwork was the key to successful space flights. Meanwhile Kornienko has racked up 516 days in space and Volkov an impressive 548.
NASA is also studying how long-term space missions could affect astronauts psychologically, especially the isolation from loved ones that comes from being up in space. “You might think the best shape changers are kind of like an octopus or a worm or a slug but yet we know that cockroaches can go through these tiny little cracks”, said Robert Full, a professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. It is the longest continuous stay in space for an American astronaut. Says Kelly, “We did it!” During his final news conference from space last week, Kelly said NASA will put him through a battery of tests as soon as he returns to measure any changes in his health.
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Kelly and Kornienko, whose colleagues on the ISS included British astronaut Tim Peake, tested special Russian equipment created to return fluid to the lower limbs as well as special exercise regimes created to counter the wastage of bone and muscle caused by the lightened physical load of zero gravity.
