Astronaut Scott Kelly's most fascinating tweets from space

Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly safely landed on Earth this morning after almost a year on the International Space Station (ISS).

After a record-breaking 342 days in orbit, Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko touched down on a steppe in Kazakhstan at 10.26am local time. The two men were part of an experiment to determine the health impact of prolonged spaceflight.

The American will now be flown to Houston to be examined for long-term effects of space travel, which include muscle atrophy, bone loss and vision problems.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

To give scientists more precise information, the tests will also be performed on Kelly's identical twin, Mark, a former Nasa shuttle commander himself who gave up space flight to take care of his wife, ex-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot at a public meeting in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011.

During his 342 days on the ISS, of which the last 11 weeks have been shared with British astronaut Tim Peake, Kelly shared snippets of life in orbit with almost a million Twitter followers. Here are some of the highlights of his space diary.

Shortly after arriving at the station, he thanked First Lady Michelle Obama for her good wishes and offered a glimpse into his living space on the orbiting laboratory:

During a moment of downtime, he took the brave decision to watch Gravity, which features a US astronaut getting lost in space:

Kelly showed off the amazing power of the ISS equipment by taking a crystal clear aerial snap of San Francisco:

That wasn't the only image; the astronaut was able to take hundreds of astonishing photos of the Earth as seen from space, including beautiful snaps of the Nile by night and African desert:

Spacewalks made a welcome break from life on the ISS, with Kelly describing once such mission as his "summer vacation":

After 300 days together, Kelly and crew-mate Korniyenko – whom he fondly calls Misha – still seemed to be getting along very well:

Both Kelly and Korniyenko have spoken about the psychological hardships of life in space, but they kept their spirits up over Christmas with some traditional decorations: