The Soyuz capsule carrying Kelly and his roommate for the past 340 days, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, landed in the central Asian nation at around 10:25 a.m. local time (11:25 p.m. Tuesday EST).
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Parallel to the study in space, Kelly’s identical earth-bound twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, was studied as a reference for comparison, ” down to the cellular level.
United States astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have touched down on Earth after nearly a year in space.
Kelly and Kornienko have been aboard the space station for 340 days, about twice as long as previous crews.
Kelly and Kornienko have been using different tools in space in an attempt to attenuate these changes. On the other hand, Kelly will fly back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston in a NASA jet.
Despite possible detrimental effects a prolonged stay in space has on one’s health, especially in someone’s vision and bones, Kelly seems unaffected. Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the record for spending 437 days, the longest cumulative time in space.
Kelly’s spaceflight eclipses a 215-day US record set in 2007 by another space station crewmember, Michael Lopez-Alegria.
“I’m going to go home and jump in my pool”, he said.
“My brother-in-law @StationCDRKelly is back on our planet!” former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, wife of Kelly’s twin brother Mark, tweeted.
Kelly finally gets to come home and wash off the space funk on Tuesday night.
Kelly’s year-long experiment has been fruitful scientifically speaking.
“The space station here is a magical place”, Kelly said during his last public news conference aboard the ISS on Thursday.
“Physically I feel pretty good. but the hardest part is being isolated in the physical sense from people on the ground who are important to you”, said Cmdr Kelly, adding: “There’s a loss of connection”. Kornienko’s total stands at 516 days over two flights, moving up to 18th on the list of most experienced cosmonauts and astronauts.
That knowledge will play a critical role in future NASA missions deeper into the solar system and on the Journey to Mars, in which a round-trip mission is likely to last 500 days or longer.
Astronaut Scott Kelly is streaking back to Earth to end an unprecedented yearlong mission in space for NASA.
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On Monday, Scott Kelly handed over command of the space station to his American colleague Timothy Kopra, who remains on the orbiting outpost with Tim Peake and the Russian Yuri Malenchenko.
