Astronauts Prepare To Head Home After A Year In Space

It was a triumphant homecoming for Kelly and Kornienko after 340 days in space.

USA astronaut Scott Kelly and his Russian crew mate ended an unprecedented 340-day stay aboard the International Space Station Tuesday and are headed toward a parachute landing in Kazakhstan.

Amid final preparations to leave with Kornienko and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, Kelly transferred command of the station to US astronaut Tim Kopra yesterday afternoon. The craft will depart from the space station this evening at 8:02 p.m. EST (0102 GMT) and will touch down in Kazakhstan about 3 hours later.

A year ago, before he launched, Kelly, 51, joked that he would be taller than his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly (the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords), when he returns, because you get a bit taller in space. Before committing to even longer Mars missions, NASA wants to know the limits of the human body for a year, minus gravity.

Any Mars mission will probably take approximately three total years, with half that time spent on travel (there and back), and the other half spent exploring the planet. The International Space Station travels at a speed of 5 miles per second and orbits the Earth every 90 minutes.

One of the aims of Kelly’s extremely long mission was to see how seriously a year in space can mess up a human body.

The mission included genetic studies that gathered important data on the effects of very long durations in space on the crew. “I have taken a lot of pictures because I’ve been up here for a long time”, he said at a recent press conference. They provided blood, saliva and urine samples, underwent ultrasounds and bone scans, got flu shots and more, all in the name of science.

Mark (left) and Scott Kelly.

“Excited to welcome him back in Houston”, Giffords tweeted.

When Kelly lands back on terra firma, he’ll have broken two American records: one for the most consecutive days in space, and another for spending the most days in space, period (520).

Astronaut Scott Kelly is streaking back to Earth to end an unprecedented yearlong mission in space for NASA.