Kelly compared the experience to a camping trip in terms of hygiene, but he said that he feels like he’s in pretty good health.
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Next week, American astronaut Scott Kelly will head back home after spending 11 months in zero gravity.
On Tuesday, he is to turn over command of the International Space Station to a fellow NASA astronaut, Timothy L. Kopra, and climb into a Russian Soyuz capsule. The world record is 438 days, set by a Russian cosmonaut in the 1990s.
“Yeah, I could go another 100 days”.
Since arriving at the space station on March, 27, 2015, Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korneinko have served with eight different crewmates, unpacked six cargo ships, weathered two botched supply runs and participated in dozens of science experiments.
Kelly spent a year on the ISS because NASA wanted to study the effects of space on the human mind and body.
This current mission has been called his Year in Space, and it will have lasted 340 days.
He snapped hundreds of breathtaking pictures of the home planet and posted them on Instagram and Twitter as StationCDRKelly, not to be confused with ShuttleCDRKelly, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, his identical twin.
The researchers, who say their findings could have applications for more grounded earthlings, hope to complete their studies by December.
This time, Kelly said, he didn’t focus on the end of his mission but rather on each upcoming milestone: the arrival of supplies and crews, major experiments, spacewalks, maintenance tasks.
He lightened things up recently by donning a gorilla suit – a gag gift from Mark – and cavorting through the station while the cameras rolled.
Kelly and Kornienko’s year may have been full of photography and firsts, but their most harrowing journey is yet to come.
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He ended the news conference with a slow-motion backflip – undoubtedly one of the pluses of space.
