Touchdown! Astronaut Scott Kelly safely returns to Earth after a year in space
After 340 days, 10,944 sunsets and sunrises, and over 143 million miles traveled aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Scott Kelly has finally come home.
His Soyuz TMA-18M capsule touched down in the middle of the desert-like steppes of Kazakhstan on Tuesday, March 1 at 11:26 p.m. ET - right on schedule.
Ground crews there are moving to assist Kelly and two other men on board, cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov, as they climb out of the Soyuz' 6,400-pound descent module.
The gumdrop-shaped capsule undocked from the ISS at 8:02 p.m. ET, and slowly started its approximately three-hour descent.
Once the capsule reached 400,000 feet above the Earth (the ISS orbits at 249 miles) a couple hours later, the planet's atmosphere was thick enough to start slowing it down.
At 11:10 p.m. ET, the parachutes deployed. The Soyuz went from traveling about 755 feet per second upon reentry to just 5 feet per second when it landed at 11:26 p.m. ET. A quick engine burst further slowed it down when it was just a few feet off the ground.
Still, the landings are always rough.
"I threw up two or three times" after landing, said Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on a live Periscope feed, describing his experience in a Soyuz descent module.
But "there's nothing quite like that first breath of fresh air," Hadfield said.
A year in space
Kelly's Year in Space mission should get us one step closer to sending humans to Mars.
NASA will compare what happened to him in space with his identical twin, Mark Kelly, who was on Earth the whole time.
In addition to collecting his own blood and saliva samples during his year in space, Kelly conducted a number of experiments - like growing lettuce and flowers in zero-gravity.
During his highly publicized mission, Kelly also did an incredible amount of public outreach.
He posted 1,000 photos to Twitter and Instagram, hosted a Reddit AMA, and hosted discussions with students and reporters about what it's like to live in space.
But he wasn't the only one in space for the last year. Russian cosmonaut Kornienko had been aboard the ISS for the entire time, too.
Kornienko, Kelly, and Volkov, a cosmonaut aboard the space station since September 2015, all returned to Earth together Tuesday night.
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Kelly will undergo many tests over the coming days and weeks to test how his body changed in space, including ones the minute he gets out of the Soyuz capsule. NASA will also compare those results to his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly.
Hopefully his results can help NASA figure out how to develop better treatments, preventative care, and spacecraft so that humans can go on long-term missions.
Today, the space station. Tomorrow, Mars.