Scott Kelly (left), the NASA astronaut and former U.S. Naval Captain who spent a year in space, successfully landed back to Earth on Tuesday onboard a Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft.
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He arrived in Houston, where he was welcomed by friends and family, including his twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly.
Kelly and Kornienko are completing an International Space Station record year-long mission to collect valuable data on the effect of long duration weightlessness on the human body that will be used to formulate a human mission to Mars.
“Astronauts get taller in space as the spine elongates”, Williams said, “but they return to preflight height after a short time back on Earth”.
“I missed everyone very much”, Kelly said. “But it feels great”.
Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, told CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” by email that the two went back-to-back an hour after his brother returned to the United States early Thursday.
Russian astronaut Sergey Volkov, who arrived at the station on September 4, 2015, joined Kelly and Kornienko on the journey back to the earth.
NASA’s goal is to send a manned mission to Mars by 2035, prompting extensive research ahead of an epic roundtrip journey that could take 2½-years.
“A really smart person said to me one time “teamwork makes the dreamwork in spaceflight”, and spaceflight is the biggest team sport there is”, Mr Kelly said.
He has now spent more time in space than any other American astronaut.
The two astronauts have described their return to Earth as bittersweet, though Kelly said that the isolation could be challenging.
The world’s longest missions were carried out by four Soviet-era cosmonau-ts aboard the now-defunct Mir space station, including a flight from January 1994 to March 1995, spanning almost 438 days by record holder Valeri Polyakov, a physician.
The man who set the record for the most consecutive days in space by an American made it home to the US on Thursday. Kelly’s family was there to welcome him back along with top NASA officials, his twin brother, and the wife of Vice President Joe Biden. “This mission is the latest achievement in our countries space program, but it is not the last, there will be more”, Kelly says.
“I wouldn’t say it was a relief, leaving the Space Station was bittersweet”.
During his time in space, Kelly and scientists observed the toll zero gravity took on his body.
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It was a triumphant homecoming for the American and Russian after 340 days in space.
