US, Russian astronauts return to earth after almost one year in space

Scott Kelly NASA astronaut and Mikhail Kornienko Russian cosmonaut returned to Earth after spending 340 days in space to find a different planet.

Riding inside the Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft, Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov landed in the Kazakhstan desert Tuesday night.

Astronaut Scott Kelly has touched down safely on Earth after his historic 340-day, year-in-space mission aboard the International Space Station.

Kelly’s year-long mission aboard the ISS will help NASA better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight and help the agency develop a manned mission to Mars. The global record is almost 438 days, set by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on the Mir space station in 1994 and 1995.

Before landing, Scott Kelly told reporters during a live link-up that he is feeling pretty good physically, but the most hard part of living in space is “being isolated in the physical sense from people on the ground who are important to you”.

Cdr Kelly’s extended time aboard the ISS allowed NASA to study the long-term effects of space travel using a comparison between his development and that of his twin brother Mark on Earth. Before committing to even longer Mars missions, NASA wants to know the limits of the human body for a year without gravity.

The spaceflyers then went their separate ways, with Kornienko and Volkov headed to Moscow and Kelly to Houston, where NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) is located.

Astronaut Scott Kelly is streaking back to Earth to end an unprecedented yearlong mission in space for NASA. The astronauts sped to back to Earth in a Russian-made Soyuz capsule – a trip that took about 3.5 hours from the International Space Station.

He led the ISS team in growing lettuce and other plants aboard the station, becoming the first humans to eat food cultivated in space.

The record for consecutive days spent in space by an American astronaut was previously held by Michael Lopez-Alegría, who spent 215 straight days in 2007.

The pair were subjected to a battery of tests before and after their ascent towards the ISS and underwent more tests soon after landing.

During a change-of-command ceremony aboard the space station Monday, Kelly said teamwork was the key to successful space flights.

Kelly surpassed the previous record for time spent in space by a United States astronaut on October 16, 2015.

It was just above freezing on a desolate plain in Kazakhstan, but Scott Kelly didn’t mind.