Astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth on Wednesday after an unprecedented year in space for NASA, landing in barren Kazakhstan with a Russian cosmonaut who shared his whole space station journey.
Their Soyuz capsule parachuted onto the central Asian steppes and ended a science-rich mission at the International Space Station that began last March and was deemed a steppingstone to Mars.
It was a triumphant homecoming for Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko after 340 days in space. Kelly pumped his fist as he emerged from the capsule, then gave a thumbs-up. He smiled and chatted with his doctors and others as photographers crushed around him in the freezing cold.
“The air feels great out here,” NASA spokesman at the scene, Rob Navias, quoted Kelly as saying. “I have no idea why you guys are all bundled up.”
Clearly animated and looking well, he said he didn’t feel much different than he did after his five-month station mission five years ago.
Kelly and Kornienko had checked out of the space station 3½ hours earlier. In total, they traveled 144 million miles through space, circled the world 5,440 times and experienced 10,880 orbital sunrises and sunsets during the longest single spaceflight by an American.
Kelly posted one last batch of sunrise photos Tuesday on Twitter, before quipping, “I gotta go!” His final tweet from orbit came several hours later: “The journey isn’t over. Follow me as I rediscover # Earth!”
Piloting the Soyuz capsule home for Kelly, 52, and Kornienko, 55, was the much fresher and decade younger cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, whose space station stint lasted the typical six months.
The two yearlong spacemen faced a series of medical tests following touchdown. Before committing to even longer Mars missions, NASA wants to know the limits of the human body for a year, minus gravity.
As he relinquished command of the space station Monday, Kelly noted that he and Kornienko “have been up here for a really, really long time” and have been jokingly telling one another, “We did it!” and “We made it!”
“A year now seems longer than I thought it would be,” Kelly confided a couple weeks ago.
Not quite a year — 340 days to be precise, based on the Russian launch and landing schedule. But still record-smashing for NASA.
Kelly’s closest U.S. contender trails him by 125 days. Russia continues to rule, however, when it comes to long-duration spaceflight. The world record of 438 days was set by a Russian doctor during the mid-1990s.
“A really smart person said to me one time, ‘Teamwork makes the dreamwork in spaceflight,’ and spaceflight is the biggest team sport there is,” Kelly said Monday. He acknowledged each of the 13 U.S., Russian, European and Japanese space fliers with whom he and Kornienko lived during the past year. “It’s incredibly important that we all work together to make what is seemingly impossible, possible.”
For NASA, that mission possible is Mars.
Scientists are hoping for more one-year subjects as NASA gears up for human expeditions to Mars in the 2030s. Radiation will be a top challenge, along with the body and mind’s durability on what will be a 2½-year journey round trip. With his one-year mission, Kelly has “helped us take one giant leap toward putting boots on Mars,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.
The choice of the pioneering Kelly turned out to be a bonanza. His identical twin, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, offered himself up as a medical guinea pig so researchers could study the differences between the genetic doubles, one in space and the other on the ground. They provided blood, saliva and urine samples, underwent ultrasounds and bone scans, got flu shots and more, all in the name of science.
“My brother @StationCDRKelly is back home on our planet! Talk about aliens. He’s been off the planet for a year,” Mark Kelly joked via Twitter.
Kelly and Kornienko were due to split up later Wednesday. Kelly heads to Houston with two flight surgeons and several other NASA reps, arriving late Wednesday night. That’s where he’ll be reunited with his two daughters, ages 21 and 12; his girlfriend, a NASA public affairs representative at Johnson Space Center; and his brother and his brother’s wife, former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
“Excited to welcome him back in Houston,” Giffords tweeted.
Kornienko returns to his home in Star City, Russia, near Moscow, to his wife, daughter and toddler grandson.
Kelly has spent more time in space, altogether, than any other American: 520 days over the course of four missions. Realizing this is likely his last journey, it was “a little bittersweet” saying goodbye to his orbiting home. He’ll have plenty of pictures, at least, for the scrapbook — he posted 1,000 dramatic, color-drenched pictures of Earth on his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
“What a ride he took us on!” fellow astronaut Reid Wiseman said in a tweet from Houston.
“Those of us who dream of sending astronauts to deep space thank Scott Kelly for his sacrifice,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science for NASA, “and are thrilled to welcome him home.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Maybe I’m out of the loop and just don’t know, but why is he a “Hero” His job is being an astronaut, that’s what he did. Being up in space for as long as he was, does not make him a hero.
He is a hero, taking chance in space, not like a war hero .
Bill,
The fact that you asked that question assures the world that you will NEVER understand.
Bill,
How many people do you know that gave up a year to spend on a space ship circling the earth to promote science, I can imagine None. Your remark seemed a bit odd.when Scott Kelly deserves to be called a True American Hero!!
When most of the population that really doesn’t have a clue about space or could care less — Kelly went the extra step that has to be taken to enlighten the rest of humanity to take a “second look” at the reality that we may be the only terrestrials in our space and that it is up to us to strive for the stars. It is a “psychological as well as a mental orientation of mankind” to say — “We need to look to the skies for more room for humanity to grow. In the space where we’re allocated a certain amount to mess with according to our limitations put their by the Creator and that we may be the only ones in our space created in the Creator’s image and their might be a reason that we are so made?” First of all as a species – we haven’t been given any factual information telling us to look forward and to “figure it out.” Instead we’re given the gift of creativity and a sense of pioneering which started with fire and star gazing under the skies by a campfire and from there we have built a world for billions of lives to be born. Kelly is a Hero because — he has taken the “Next Giant Leap for Mankind” to venture into other worlds where we will be able to figure out if we as a species are indeed “Made for Star Travel to Go Where NO Other Mankind Has Gone” were we will grow our societies and build new cities and hopefully — give ourselves millennium long lives and learn for once to live in peace with each other not murder each other because we have so much to do and so little time in which to do it. That makes Kelly a Hero in my book!