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