If all goes well, Astronaut Scott Kelly is scheduled to return to Earth next Tuesday, after spending 12 months on the International Space Station.
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FILE – Scott Kelly shared photographs of a blooming zinnia flower in the Veggie plant growth system aboard the International Space Station, Jan. 16, 2016.
The space-bound Kelly will take blood samples just before each time a shuttle returns to earth during his tenure, allowing scientists to study fresh, unfrozen cells just hours after they’re drawn. “Even after I’ve been here almost a year, you don’t feel perfectly normal”, he said. “I could go for another 100 days or 100 years”, Kelly said Thursday, during his last briefing with reporters from orbit before he heads home next week. “On the one hand I look forward to going home, but it’s something that has been a big part of my life and I’m gonna miss it”. From a hygiene perspective, he said, he feels as if he has been camping in the woods for a year.
Kelly took questions on Day 335 of what already is NASA’s longest single spaceflight.
When Kelly lands back on the earth on March 1, he will have to undergo some tests that may tell how human body behaves in space after a long stay. The world record is 438 days, set by a Russian cosmonaut in the 1990s. They will also collect data from his Russian roommate for the year, Mikhail Kornienko.
In less than a week, Scott J. Kelly will once again feel weight.
The first thing he’ll do back home in Houston after completing medical tests: “I’m going to go home and jump in my pool”, said Kelly, who celebrated his 52nd birthday Sunday.
Kelly rocketed away last March on a research-packed mission. Mission Control also arranges regular video conferences between astronauts and their families.
As per NASA’s schedule, NASA Television coverage will begin at 3:10 p.m. EST on Monday, February 29th, when Kelly hands over command of the station to fellow NASA astronaut Tim Kopra.
Kelly said he was particularly intrigued by research on genetic changes that occur in space, which scientists will try to glean from comparisons with his twin brother, Mark E. Kelly, a retired NASA astronaut.
When his mission ends, Kelly will have spent 340 consecutive days on the space station and a total of 520 days in space counting his time from previous trips. That was because of the assassination attempt two months earlier on his congresswoman sister-in-law, Gabrielle Giffords, Mark’s wife.
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The hardest part, Kelly said, is the “loss of connection in a physical sense” from loved ones on Earth.
