Astronaut Scott Kelly is home

A Soyuz capsule carrying NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko, Sergey Volkov landed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, NASA television reported. Now, the experiment is done, and Kelly – who became a household name – will return to Earth, and you can watch his homecoming live.

Kelly and Kornienko have been aboard the space station for 340 days, about twice as long as previous crews.

In his last tweet from space Kelly wrote: “Thanks for following our #YearInSpace”.

He posted 1,000 photos to Twitter and Instagram, hosted a Reddit AMA, and hosted discussions with students and reporters about what it’s like to live in space. Counting his last three trips to space, Kelly will have spent a total of 520 days in orbit.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is closing the door on a space mission that has spanned a U.S.-record 340 days.

Kelly began his mission to the space station on March 27, 2015, riding a Russian rocket that launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Along with the actual technology and science of it all, the space agency notes that figuring out a way to keep humans healthy during prolonged space flight is also one of the biggest hurdles for a Mars mission.

Kelly said the hardest thing about life in space is probably being isolated from the people he cares about the most, and missing certain amenities.

Hopefully his results can help NASA figure out how to develop better treatments, preventative care, and spacecraft so that humans can go on long-term missions. The world record of 438 days was set by a Russian doctor during the 1990s.

Kelly has completed a almost yearlong mission on the International Space Station, the longest any USA astronaut has been in space.

Teamwork comes to the fore once Kelly gets back on solid ground.

Using computer tests, Dr. Basner is closely monitoring both Scott Kelly, in space, and his twin brother, retired astronaut Mark, back on earth, simultaneously – any differences pinpointing how months in space could affect abilities to think, reason and make decisions. NASA’s coverage continues with Kelly’s return to Houston on Wednesday and post-flight briefings Friday.