Astronaut Scott Kelly, left, and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko plan to spend more than 11 months aboard the International Space Station to collect data on the long-term physiological and psychological effects of the space environment. NASA<\/p>\n
Shuttle veteran Scott Kelly first heard about NASA's plans to send an astronaut to the International Space Station for nearly a full year shortly after he completed his third space flight in 2011, a 159-day stay aboard the orbital lab complex. <\/p>\n
The idea wasn't particularly attractive. <\/p>\n
\"At first, I'll be honest with you, I wasn't all that interested,\" he said. \"I hadn't given it a whole lot of thought, and it was soon after I had gotten back from my last flight. So the difficulty of living and working in space for a long period of time was still kind of fresh in my mind.\" <\/p>\n
But he thought about it. Then he thought some more. <\/p>\n
Finally, after \"mulling it over and talking about it with my family, friends, girlfriend, I decided the challenges that staying in space for a whole year presented were appealing to me, even considering the sacrifices you and your family are in for to do that kind of thing.\" <\/p>\n
In November 2012, Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, veteran of a 176-day stay aboard the station in 2010, were assigned to what NASA bills as the \"One-Year Mission.\" Now, after more than two years of training in the United States, Russia, Europe and Japan, they're finally ready to go. <\/p>\n
Joined by Soyuz TMA-16M commander Gennady Padalka, one of Russia's most experienced cosmonauts, Kelly and Kornienko are scheduled for blastoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:42:57 p.m. EDT Friday (GMT-4; 1:43 a.m. Saturday local time), departing from the same launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age more than 50 years ago. <\/p>\n
If all goes well, the trio will dock at the space station's upper Poisk module around 9:36 p.m. after a four-orbit, six-hour rendezvous. Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Expedition 43 commander Terry Virts, cosmonaut Alexander Shkaplerov and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Astronaut Scott Kelly braces for yearlong space flight<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Astronaut Scott Kelly, left, and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko plan to spend more than 11 months aboard the International Space Station to collect data on the long-term physiological and psychological effects of the space environment. NASA Shuttle veteran Scott Kelly first heard about NASA's plans to send an astronaut to the International Space Station for nearly a full year shortly after he completed his third space flight in 2011, a 159-day stay aboard the orbital lab complex. Continue reading