In March 2015, astronaut Scott Kelly launched from Earth aboard the the Soyuz TMA-16M to the International Space Station (ISS) to spend a #YearinSpace aboard the station. Aside from a few space walks, this was for scientists and psychologists to study what the effects are that space has on the human body. This long duration of time was never anticipated or studied before this past year.
In his approximately 340 days aboard the ISS, Kelly updated us through Twitter, and NASA through weekly conferences, to what was happening up there in the middle of nowhere - with breathtaking pictures and words to accompany.
Photo by Astronaut Scott Kelly
Spending a year in space can sound really cool, but it's also very perplexing. What did he eat? How did the food get to the space station? Did he just float around the whole time? While aboard the space station, Kelly drank "193 gallons of recycled sweat and urine," according to a tweet by the New York Times. Here are some more numbers that will blow your mind:
Kelly witnessed 10,944 sunrises and sunsets: the ISS orbits around Earth at more than 17,000 miles per hour (that's once every 90 minutes).
He ran 648 miles on a treadmill aboard the station: to avoid the weakening of bones and muscles in space (since there's no gravity and all), NASA uses the treadmill as a strategy to help avoid deteriorating the body's functions.
There were 713 photos posted from space. Internet was not something Kelly had to miss while aboard the ISS: he averaged more than two Instagram posts a day during his mission and tweeted more than 2,000 times.
(Numbers from New York Times article)
If you've ever seen any movie about space, you can take one true thing away from those movies: spacecraft holding cargo (food, supplies, etc.) is launched into space and is perfectly timed and mapped out so that it reaches the space station at exactly the right time for it to be grabbed and used.
Photo by Scott Kelly
Among the last 15 years of continuous human presence aboard the space station, one unique aspect of Kelly and his team's trip to space is that he has an identical twin. What does that mean to you? Well, it gives researchers at NASA and, well, us, an incredible opportunity to get more precise and specific information on how your body changes while in space by comparing a body to its exact replica on Earth.
One example of how they tested this was on Sept. 24, when Scott gave himself the flu shot among the space station. At the same time, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, his twin Mark Kelly also gave himself the shot.
I know, you just want more pictures. Here you go:
Photo by Scott Kelly, taken on August 7.
Photo by Scott Kelly along with tweet: "The color psychology of orange is optimistic. From my view, things are looking up down here."
Photo by Scott Kelly, taken on April 26: image of bodies of water on the United States' East Coast
Although the main purpose of this mission was for scientists to understand the effects of microgravity on the human body for extreme lengths of time, Kelly provided those who checked his Twitter daily and NASA.gov hundreds of unbelievable images of Earth from space, and that is not a view we can see every day.
Scott Kelly is set to return to Earth on March 1, having spent 340 days in space. Check the hashtag #YearinSpace, his Twitter (@StationCDRKelly), and his Instagram (@stationcdrkelly) to see his pictures. They're absolutely amazing.
