The module was the only portion of the shuttle that would survive the 249 mile freefall back to earth, said Turek.
Advertisement
Tuesday evening marked the end of astronaut Scott Kelly’s 340-day mission on the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is closing the door on a space mission that has spanned a U.S.-record of 340 days.
Kelly posted one last batch of sunrise photos Tuesday on Twitter, before quipping, “I gotta go!” “I have no idea why you guys are bundled up”. “#GoodNight from @space_station! #YearInSpace”.
Kelly finally gets to come home and wash off the space funk on Tuesday night. “A year now seems longer than I thought it would be”, Kelly said a few weeks ago.
The space veteran says he has witnessed some of the most unbelievable scenes of Earth during his mission, like spotting the northern lights, passing over the Bahamas and watching huge storms like Hurricane Patricia. Storms bigger than we’ve seen in the past. “This is not a natural phenomenon”. But there are opportunities to solve the Earth’s environmental problems, Kelly said Thursday. “If we can dream it”, he said from space, “we can do it if we really want to”.
Vance Gao, a graduate student in NU’s Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program who is studying under Turek, said he was looking forward to analyzing the evidence.
“I’ll probably never see it again”, Kelly told Gupta.
The part of the “Year in Space” mission where the astronauts are actually living in space may be over, but the experiment will continue.
But did he really get taller than his brother?
Kelly and his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly, have also been taking part in NASA’s “twins study”. Lots and lots of experiments. 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.
NASA needs to know a lot more about these changes to the body before it can send people to Mars or on any other long spaceflights.
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images Scott Kelly greets recovery crews after being helped out of a Soyuz capsule, ending his 340 days in space. The first included a variety of station upgrade and maintenance tasks, including routing cables to prepare for new docking ports for US commercial crew spacecraft.
The world record for longest single stay in space is held by Russian Valery Polyakov, who spent some 438 days on the Mir space station from 1994 to 1995.
Piloting the Soyuz capsule home was the much fresher and decade younger cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, whose space station stint lasted the typical six months.
Advertisement
Kelly will fly to Houston on Wednesday for examination by NASA doctors. NASA will spend years analyzing the tests he conducted on board.
