Scott Kelly (left), the NASA astronaut and former U.S. Naval Captain who spent a year in space, successfully landed back to Earth on Tuesday onboard a Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft.
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Kelly spent 340 days on the International Space Station-longer than any American in history.
After the best part of a year in space and a re-entry which subjected his body to more than four times gravity’s earthly pull after 340 days of weightlessness, Scott Kelly might have been forgiven yesterday for wanting a hard-earned rest.
He told the crowd at Ellington Airport near Johnson Space Centre: “It’s great to be back in Texas on U.S. soil”.
Everyone has been celebrating the astronauts’ homecoming and it seems like US President Barack Obama was excited as anyone on Kelly’s safe return.
So how’s he doing after a year inside there, eating NASA space food and using gravity resistant on board space potties and floating around the tiny rooms in the space station for a year?
Their Soyuz capsule parachuted onto the central Asian steppes. Interestingly some believe Kelly now to be “younger” by about 1/100th of a second, Strauss says.
“I think that expanding our envelope and our ability to operate is something that will take us further from the planet”, he said, during an interview with NASA TV shortly after landing in Kazakhstan early Wednesday.
To learn more about the mission and what Kelly did during his time in space, check out our previous posts below.
Scott Kelly grew two inches during his time aboard the International Space Station, NASA’s Jeff Williams said.
“In a very material way, he has been having to work out two hours every day to try to maintain his health while being productive just like an astronaut would have to on the way to Mars”, said Jones. Scott Kelly’s year in space was part of a NASA twin study involving his brother, Mark Kelly. “Talk about aliens. He’s been off the planet for a year”, tweeted Mark Kelly, who retired as an astronaut in 2011.
Kelly witnessed 10,944 sunsets and sunrises, and travelled about 144 million miles through space aboard the ISS.
The “one-year crew” mission – which began on March 27 last year – was the longest by any astronauts aboard the ISS and seen as a vital chance to measure the effects of a prolonged period in space on the human body.
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John Holden, President Obama’s science advisor, also welcomed Kelly home, noting that his record-breaking trip reinforces the United States’ commitment to put a man or woman on Mars. “Even though I looked forward to coming home, and there are things that I miss, I felt like if it was for the right reason, I clearly could have stayed however long it took”.
