Halfway into his 12-month stint on the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Scott Kelly said that he missed fresh air, the outdoors, and his friends and family, but that he was doing well and looked forward to tackling the remainder of one-year mission with “enthusiasm”.
According to AFP reports, Kelly’s comments were aired on NASA television and came during a National Press Club event held Monday to commemorate the halfway point of the Year In Space mission. Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who like Kelly has agreed to stay on the station for twice as long as normal for research purposes, did not participate in the interview.
“I feel pretty good overall,” Kelly told reporters. “What I am looking most forward to is just getting to the end of it with as much energy and enthusiasm as I had at the beginning,” he added, noting that he missed “being with people you care about” and “going outside.”
“This is a very closed environment, you can never leave. The lighting is pretty much the same, the smell… everything is the same,” the astronaut continued. “My ability to move around is really improved over time… Your clarity of thought is greater, your ability to focus. I found that the adaptation has not stopped, and it will be interesting to see six months from now.”
Kelly believes long-term space travel ‘won’t be an issue’
Back in March, Kelly and Kornienko agreed to spend twice the length of a normal mission on the ISS, as NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) study how extended voyages in space impact the human mind and body. The information will be invaluable as NASA looks to send a manned mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s.
Scott Kelly’s identical twin brother Mark, who attended at Monday’s event, has been undergoing analysis on Earth over the past year as well. One of the main objectives of the mission is to track how the physiologies of the two men differ after one spends a year in the weightless environment of the space station and the other remains on the ground. The results will help NASA scientists to prepare for the space agency’s planned manned mission to Mars in the 2030s.
“The one-year mission enables scientists to study much longer-term effects of weightlessness on the human body, yielding information that will be critical if NASA pursues President Obama’s plan to send a mission to Mars by the 2030s,” Spaceflight Insider explained. “This information will also provide medical research to help patients recovering from long periods of bed rest, and also improve monitoring for people with compromised immune systems.”
The extended ISS mission will also reveal how radiation in space may have affected Scott, and reveal more about the bone loss and vision problems previously associated with living in space, the AFP added. Kelly told reporters that he hoped the research would show that humans are able to adapt to extended periods of space travel, telling them, “I think over the long term it won’t be an issue. We as a species, throughout evolution, we have shown we are very adaptable.”
Six months down, six months to go: This one’s for you Scott Kelly.
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Feature Image: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, center, takes medical measurements as part of the Fluid Shifts investigations along with Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko, left, and Gennady Padalka. Fluid Shifts measures how much fluid shifts from the lower body to the upper body, and determines the impact these shifts have on fluid pressure in the head, changes in vision and eye structures. (Credit: NASA)
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