New Delhi :
After spending 340 days in orbit, astronaut Scott Kelly is set to return home today on March 1. Discharging his duties off space, Kelly will plummet through Earth’s atmosphere in a Soyuz spacecraft. Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, his Russian counterpart have together spent nearly a year in International Space Station.
He has probably been the most active astronaut from space but that’s not enough for his introduction. His year-long stay makes him the first American to endure such a feat. NASA’s One-Year Mission focused on seven categories of research, including medical, psychological and biomedical challenges during long-duration spaceflight.
The spacebound Kelly wasn’t only spending time eating veggies and taking selfies in space but also collecting blood, urine, saliva, and poop—for science! And at the same time, NASA has been taking samples from his identical twin to compare the situations and get a better handle on what happens to the human bodies in space.
Unlike earth, the human body takes time to adapt when in space and some of the effects of microgravity become obvious with time. Bone become weaker as they no longer have to bear the weight of walking, muscles atrophy. The ISS astronauts, to counteract that spend an average of two hours a day exercising, strapped onto a treadmill with elastic bands or doing weight resistance training.
The Charlie Brown effect also affect you in space, where fluids in the face make astronauts more round-cheeked than they typically are on Earth. Considering all these changes, here are some of the major milestones of Scott Kelly’s year in space:
Spacewalks
Kelly made three spacewalks in October, November and December. The first spacewalk focused on station updates and maintenance tasks. In their second spacewalk, NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren spent 7 hours and 48 minutes working outside the International Space Station on the 190th spacewalk in support of station assembly and maintenance.
The third spacewalk was made in December to help latch a rail car into place before a Russian cargo spacecraft docks at the International Space Station early Wednesday.
Space X rocket explosion
On June 28, 2015, a SpaceX rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station exploded only a couple of minutes after launch. The 4,000 lbs. (1,814 kilograms) of lost cargo included food, supplies and science experiments for the station, such as a high-resolution camera for meteor observations.
Parallel twin studies
Along with studying the human body changes in space, Scott Kelly is also participating the parallel twin studies. His twin brother Mark Kelly on earth, his body changes and Scott’s changes will help scientists to learn more ways to study human space flight,
Veggies in space
This time the astronauts literally got a taste of their own grown food in space. Because the shipping supplies to other planets is just too expensive and also fraught with possible problems.
In the veggie experiment, astronauts ate a vegetable- lettuce grown in space.
Birthday in space
The spacebound astronaut got to celebrate an extra special birthday on February 21 in space which he shares with his twin brother. NASA also got a unique opportunity to see how the genes of a person change after extended stays in space.
Socially active in space
Kelly was in space indeed but he was super active when it comes to social media. He was sharing beautiful photos from space of the first grown flower in space and breath taking pictures of Earth from there. Be it Twitter or Instagram NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has been sharing striking pictures of Earth from space.
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