America’s space champ ready to end yearlong flight, get home

Yet he said he could hold out another year in the “harsh environment” of space – where nothing ever feels normal – if he had to.

But Kelly also talked of the pleasures of being in space – the glorious views, the pride in work well done and the honor of being one of the very few people to spend time off the planet. The program will also explore the future of humanity’s attempts to live beyond Earth. “And I do what I do on Earth and cover my mouth with my hand”. “It’s something that I hope to see in my lifetime”, Kelly commented about travel to Mars. “We would be happy to see no difference in a six-month mission versus a year-long mission”, said Charles. Two of these investigations, which deal with the effects of long spaceflights on the human body are fluid shifts and field tests. “This is not a natural phenomenon”.

“I look forward to fresh food, to, like, a salad, believe it or not”, Kelly said. Kelly then emerges and makes his way through the laboratory chasing the fellow astronaut in zero-G. These studies are in addition to the 400 investigations Kelly participated in aboard the space station like growing vegetables and flowers in microgravity.

Scott Kelly is about to head home after 11 months aboard the International Space Station, but the astronaut says he could have stayed in orbit for another year if NASA had so desired.

But he added that the station is a “magical place” and a journey that he believes more people will be able to take in time. “It would just depend on what I was doing and if it made sense, although I do look forward to getting home here next week”.

Before Scott’s launch, the brothers told Kerley that while Mark got the “easy part” of the assignment, Scott got “the fun part”. For Kelly and Kornienko, it should be refreshing, but there won’t be much time to relax.

Kelly said his biggest challenge was psychological, the prolonged isolation of living in space. “We don’t know whether Scott will have lost bone or not”, Robinson said.

Kelly’s value to science is even higher as half of the only pair of astronaut identical twins. Lots and lots of experiments.

Kelly took questions on Day 335 of what already is NASA’s longest single spaceflight.

Understanding how the body changes after one-year mission to space is instrumental to future human space missions, particularly long ones to Mars.

Last year, his firm was awarded a NASA grant under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships.

So what will Kelly do when he gets back to Houston?