Astronaut Scott Kelly has landed safely on Earth after a year in space

Cmd. Scott Kelly says goodbye to fellow astronauts aboard International Space Station

(Image credit: AP/YouTube)

published 2 March 2016

Astronaut Scott Kelly woke up on Tuesday, the last of his record 340 straight days in space, and took a picture.

At about 8 p.m. EST, Kelly and his roommate at the International Space Station for the past year, cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, said goodbye to their colleagues at the ISS and boarded a Soyuz capsule for their return trip to Earth. They landed in Kazakhstan at 11:26 p.m. EST, piloted by a second cosmonaut, Sergey Volkov, who had been at the ISS six months. Now Kelly and Kornienko will undergo a battery of tests to see how their bodies adapted to the long spell of weightlessness, radiation, isolation from other humans, and stress — a key step in determining if humans can fly to Mars. Kelly's results will be compared with ones from his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, also an astronaut.

Subscribe to The Week

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

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

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.

Explore More

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox