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[h=4]Astronaut Kelly set to launch on record-setting trip[/h]Imagine being given a year to float free of gravity, to gaze down at Earth and its changing seasons, to observe the heavens from space as few ever have. But during that time you could not to take a breath of
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On Friday, March 27, astronaut Scott Kelly will smash the U.S. endurance record for the longest continuous time in space. The one-year mission will provide NASA with invaluable data as his twin brother, Mark Kelly, undergoes the same tests on Earth. Sierra Oshrin
Imagine being given a year to float free of gravity, to gaze down at Earth and its changing seasons, to observe the heavens from space as few ever have.
But during that time you could not to take a breath of fresh air, hug a loved one or hear the sound of falling rain, and you were confined to the office that afforded those spectacular views.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will attempt to balance those realities during a nearly yearlong mission aboard the International Space Station that they will embark upon Friday.
"The space station is a magical place," said Kelly, discussing the mission earlier this month. "But you never get to leave."
The veteran space fliers are scheduled to blast off in a Soyuz spacecraft at 3:42 p.m. ET from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and reach their home for the next year — roughly 250 miles above Earth — less than six hours later.
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They'll be joined for the ride up by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who will visit the orbiting research complex for a standard six-month expedition.
By doubling that mission duration for two crew members for the first time on ISS — four cosmonauts lived for at least a year on Russia's Mir station — NASA and its partners hope to learn more about the issues astronauts might face on even longer voyages toMars.
"The one-year increment will expand the bounds of how we live and work in space and will increase our knowledge regarding the effects of microgravity on humans as we prepare for future missions beyond low-Earth orbit," said Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's human spaceflight programs, when the mission was announced in 2012.
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The space agencies are discussing assigning more astronauts to yearlong missions.
It's something Kelly, a 51-year-old father of two daughters (ages 20 and 11) who spent nearly six months on the station ending in early 2011, was not enthusiastic about at first.
"I'll be honest with you, I wasn't all that interested," he said. "After mulling it over, talking to my family, friends, girlfriend, I decided that the challenges that staying in space for a whole year presented was appealing to me even considering the sacrifices."
Kornienko's wife cried upon learning about his second long spaceflight — this time for an entire year — but later supported the decision. The 54-year-old grandfather will fly with pictures of his family and his deceased parents.
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"We have the chance to be the first to spend a whole year on the space station, and it will be of great use for future generations for science and for those who might fly further to Mars and to outer space," he said, through a translator.
Kelly does not conceal how difficult he expects living on the station for nearly a year — 342 days, to be precise — to be. But hopefully he'll experience nothing like the family crisis he confronted during his first expedition.
Halfway through that flight he learned about the shooting of his sister-in-law, then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who is married to his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly. Giffords continues to recover, but that day both Kellys endured early media reports that she had died.
Mark Kelly is in Central Asia to see his brother launch.
Researchers will take advantage of a twin's involvement in the mission to study spaceflight's long-term effects. They'll compare how Scott responds over the year in microgravity to Mark, a four-time shuttle flier, back on the ground.
Months in space are known to cause loss of bone and muscle mass, weakened immune systems and impaired vision, but the upcoming mission will track those health impacts over more time, with better medical technology than was available during Russia's previous year-plus missions.
"That's one of the reasons why we're doing this flight and flying for longer than we have before, to better understand some of these effects and how to mitigate them for our future exploration goals," said Scott Kelly.
Based on experience and advice from cosmonauts who have flown longer — the longest single trip lasted 438 days — Kelly expects his biggest challenge will be pacing his workload to avoid burnout.
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NASA astronauts have ventured back outside the International Space Station for more cable work and a lube job.
Appropriately, the mission patch for his Soyuz crew features marathon runners.
"I hope I get six months into this and I have six months of energy left in the battery to get to the end," he said. "I think I will."
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On his last flight, however, he found he began feeling mentally ready to return home about two-thirds of the way through — after just four months, in that case. He hopes not to feel that way so soon this time.
It might help that Kelly will participate in a busy period involving what he calls the station's "reassembly." A module and other components will be rearranged, and he'll likely perform his first spacewalk.
During free time he plans to talk to family and friends with a Skype-like phone connection, see them in occasional video conferences, send e-mails, read books and watch TV shows uplinked to him, including Houston Texans football games.
"It hasn't escaped me that I'll watch a whole baseball season, which is very long, and a whole football season," he said.
He plans to maintain a daily journal to document his thoughts and feelings as the lengthy mission progresses, experiences he'll share with scientists.
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In addition to Kornienko, Kelly will spend parts of his year in orbit with 13 others coming to and going from the outpost, including the three crew members there now. But he knows he'll miss the variety of people and weather on Earth, and will grapple with the monotony of being in the same place for so long.
"You'll miss your friends and family on Earth," he said. "You also miss being able to leave, being able to go outside your place of work. It's kind of like you're at work 24/7 for a whole year."
At the same time, he's looking forward to seeing how parts of the planet change over an entire year, its thin, fragile atmosphere, and visually stunning space weather phenomenon like the aurora.
By the end of the mission, Kelly's career total of 522 days in space will set a U.S. record, surpassing Mike Fincke's 382 days. But it will be Gennady Padalka, now 56 and launching with Kelly on his fifth spaceflight, who upon returning in six months will own the all-time record: 888 days, or more than two years of his life.
Reluctant initially, Kelly finally welcomed the opportunity to fly in space again, perhaps for the last time, in a different and more demanding way.
"I don't think I've ever done anything that will be as hard as this," he said. "I look forward to this flight and the challenge that the duration presents."
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Longest space missions (all on Russia's Mir space station)
• Valery Polyakov: 438 days in space, 1994-95
• Sergei Avdeyev: 380 days, 1998-99
• Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov: 366 days, 1987-88
• Yuri Romanenko: 326 days, 1987
• Sergei Krikalev: 312 days, 1991-92
Source: NASA
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