Astronaut Scott Kelly Reaches Halfway Point of His Year in Space

Last week, a few individuals had the distinct and unique opportunity to actually correct an astronaut on something astronomical after worldwide Space Station resident Scott Kelly inadvertently misidentified the moon as the Sunday . The two men are to spend a total of 342 days on the worldwide Space Station in order to explore the effects on a human body of spending an extended time in space.

Astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are six months into a one-year stint onboard the ISS as part of an experiment to find out the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body. The mission will help scientists understand how humans might cope with a journey to Mars. While the novelty of being captured on the global Space Station (ISS) goes away with time, all that remains is the tiresome knowledge that astronauts are essentially trapped in one place. His experiments include comparisons with his Earth-bound identical twin, Mark Kelly, a former astronaut.

During an interview from the space station in low-earth orbit, Kelly said he is missing fresh air, but feels pretty good overall. This is the longest sojourn in space ever assigned to a NASA astronaut, although Russian cosmonauts have spent several missions of a year or longer on the Mir station.

“I intentionally thought about ways for me to get to the end of this with as much energy as I had in the beginning”, Kelly said. The “Year in Space” mission is running in tandem with the notable “Twins Study”, where Kelly’s brother Mark remains on Earth and is examined in similar ways to Scott.

Of course, these juicy tidbits are just the tip of the iceberg – we’ve got a lot of science to learn from Kelly as the year progresses, so stay tuned.

For instance, they’ve had their eyes and their vision closely monitored to pin down any potential changes due to increased intracranial pressure, in turn the result of fluid shifts in the upper body because of weightlessness.

“This is a very closed environment, you can never leave”, he added.

Amongst other things, the duo will see nearly 11,000 sunrises and sunsets, millions of stars and some truly incredible views, many of which Kelly has been avidly Tweeting.