It will be the longest anyone has ever spent on the ISS, and it appears to be a precursor to manned expeditions to Mars, which will be 2- to 3-year-long journey.
Astronaut Scott Kelly is headed for the International Space Station — and they won’t be back for a long, long time.
It will be NASA’s first attempt at a one-year spaceflight as the agency turns its sights toward Mars, an expedition that could take two or three years, according to a Fox News report.
Kelly blasted off aboard a Soyuz-FG booster rocket in Kazakhstan along with two Russian cosmonauts yesterday at 3:42 p.m. Eastern Time, and he won’t return until March 2016.
Chris Carberry, executive director of non-profit organization Explore Mars, called it an “important step forward” in preparation for future visits to the Red Planet, he said in an interview with Fox News.
The goal is to land a human on Mars in the 2030s, and more ambitious missions to ISS will be necessary to help achieve such a difficult goal.
During his time on the ISS, NASA wil study the effects of space on the human body and then compare it to his twin brother Mark, a former astronaut, who is back on Earth. This will allow NASA to directly compare their almost identical genetics, comparing one who is in space with one who is on the ground.
Kelly has made three previous trips to space, and his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Kornienko, spent 6 months on the ISS in 2010. Both of them will stay on ISS for a year.
A third member of the team, Gennady Padalka, also Russian, will spend 6 months on the space station before heading back to Earth.
Kelly has visited the ISS once before, when he was there for five months between October 2010 and March 2011. He is a former Navy pilot.
