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The Year Long Mission on the International Space Station is a scientific research project that studies the health effects of long term spaceflight. Scott Kelly and Mikhail Korniyenko spent 342 days in space, with scientists performing medical experiments. Kelly and Kornienko launched on 27 March 2015 on Soyuz TMA-16M along with Gennady Padalka. The mission encompassed Expeditions 43, 44, 45 and 46. The pair safely landed in Kazakhstan on March 2, 2016, returning aboard Soyuz TMA-18M with Sergey Volkov. The mission supported the NASA Twins study, which helps shed light on the health effects of long duration spaceflight, which is of interest for Mars missions especially.
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History
In November 2012, NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and their international partners selected two veteran spacefarers for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station in 2015. The mission includes collecting scientific data important to future human exploration of the Solar System. Kelly and Korniyenko already had a connection; Kelly was a backup crew member for the station's Expedition 23/24 crews, where Korniyenko served as a flight engineer.
The goal aboard the orbiting laboratory is to understand better how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space. Data from the 12 months will help inform current assessments of crew performance and health and will determine better and validate countermeasures to reduce the risks associated with future exploration as NASA plans for missions around the Moon, asteroids and ultimately Mars.
Health studies
The International Space Station has developed exercise equipment, including treadmills and resistance devices to limit muscle atrophy in a low gravity environment. Weightlessness causes body fluids in astronauts to accumulate in the upper half of the body, leading to facial edema and unwelcome side effects. One problem may be the low gravity effecting the body in unforeseen ways and its hard detect the cause and effect of gravity on the body. One problem is that astronauts get treated like human guinea pigs, and in cases like Apollo 7 may disagree with mission control about what is the right thing to do on a mission. One famous example of this is when Space Shuttle did practice a dangerous maneuver as a test saying we should not play Russian roulette. On the other hand space seems to cause trouble for a number of body parts including bone, sometimes the eyes, and a classic problem is space sickness (think sea-sickness or motion sickness)
Psychological studies
The study will also require the astronauts to keep a journal, and will study the psychological effects of living in a confined space for an extended length of time. Kornienko said of his experiences on Expedition 23/24: "The thing you miss there most of all is the Earth itself, I missed smells. I missed trees, I even dreamt of them. I even hallucinated. I thought I smelled a real fire and something being barbecued on it! I ended up putting pictures of trees on the walls to cheer up. You do miss the Earth there."
Scott stated that he missed feeling changes in the weather while on the ISS.
History
Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov spent 365 days in space on Mir from December 1987 to December 1988. Sergei Avdeyev spent 379 days on Mir in 1999 and Valeri Polyakov spent 437 days on Mir in 1995.
Prior to the Year Long Mission, the longest mission on the ISS was 215 days, by Mikhail Tyurin and Michael López-Alegría. Samantha Cristoforetti holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 199.7 days.