United States astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth on Wednesday after spending nearly a year in space in a ground-breaking experiment foreshadowing a potential manned mission to Mars.
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Kelly’s 340-day space journey began on March 27, 2015. Kelly also shared some of the most fascinating and breathtaking pictures during this one-year stint in space.
Kelly and Kornienko share the history making distinction of comprising the first ever “1 Year Crew” to serve aboard the massive Earth orbiting science research outpost in space.
The results from the research will help NASA to plan the future NASA mission deeper into the solar system and on the journey to Mars, there is so much to see while planning with this research the process gets the needed aid. “The air feels great out here”, Kelly told NASA officials, who were helicoptered to the landing site to meet him.
Kelly, along with his identical twin brother Mark Kelly, a former NASA astronaut, also are participating in genetic studies, the first to assess if genetic changes take place during long spaceflights.
Kelly, 52, and Kornienko, 55, travelled in total 144 million miles through space, circled the Earth 5,440 times and experienced 10,880 orbital sunrises and sunsets during the longest single spaceflight by an American.
Speaking with reporters before leaving the station, Kelly crossed his arms and bobbed in zero gravity.
The world’s longest missions were made by four Soviet-era cosmonauts aboard the now-defunct Mir space station, including a January 1994 to March 1995 flight spanning almost 438 days by record holder Valeri Polyakov, a physician.
The latest one-year space subjects quickly parted company, Kelly flying back to Houston and Kornienko to Star City, Russia, near Moscow.
Neither will be saying goodbye – in Russian, do svidaniya – to medical tests anytime soon.
“I’m going to go home and jump in my pool”, he said.
They have spent the past year at the International Space Station and their return ends a record-long U.S. spaceflight meant to pave the way for human travel to mars. You can find more videos at the NASA Twitter account.
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“Space flight is the biggest team sport there is, and it’s incredibly important that we all work together to make what is seemingly impossible possible”, Mr Kelly said when handing over command of the ISS to fellow Nasa astronaut Tim Kopra on Monday.
