Kelly, Kornienko halfway through yearlong ISS flight
Astronaut Mark Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko hit the halfway point in their nearly yearlong mission Tuesday. Both men say they're feeling fit, both mentally and physically, and anticipate no problems completing all their research before returning to Earth next March.
"I feel pretty good overall," Kelly said Monday in a space-to-ground chat with reporters, friends and colleagues at the National Press Club in Washington. "I definitely recognize that I've been up here a long time and have just as long ahead of me. But I feel positive about it. I think if I manage my work, pace of work, and energy right I'll have enough in the tank to get to the end. I'm pretty sure I will."
As for his physical condition, Kelly said the station's exercise equipment does a good job of keeping the astronauts fit and "as far as physically, I feel good."
"But there are a lot of effects of this environment that we can't see or feel, like bone loss, effects on our vision, effects on our genetics, our DNA, RNA and proteins, things like that. And that's why we're studying this, myself and Misha, on this one-year flight."
And so far, he said, "the jury's out on that."
"We're going to have to get all the data and have the scientists analyze it and submit the results for peer review," Kelly said. "Hopefully we'll find out some great things about me and my colleague spending a year in space."
In an earlier NASA interview, Kornienko agreed the mission is going well, adding that despite the isolation and the long time away from his family he was glad to be there.
"I understood it is going to be challenging and it's going to be tiresome," Kornienko said, speaking through an interpreter. "This is not a resort, this is a workplace. At the same time, it's incredibly fun, difficult and amazing and beautiful! Because not many people have the honor to be working with this group of people in this amazing structure, it's a great honor for me.
"I'm trying not to think about (coming home in) March yet because we still are (only) about just one half of the mission," he said. "When it is getting closer, then maybe we'll start thinking about returning. Right now, we're just working."
Kelly, Kornienko and Soyuz TMA-16M commander Gennady Padalka were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan last March 27.
The over-arching goal of the long-duration mission by Kelly and Kornienko is to collect medical data on the long-term effects of weightlessness and space radiation that will be needed for eventual deep space missions to Mars or elsewhere.
Because Soyuz spacecraft are only certified for around 210 days in space, a fresh ferry craft -- Soyuz TMA-18M -- docked at the station Sept. 2. The commander, Sergey Volkov, will return to Earth with Kelly and Kornienko on March 3.
Padalka returned to Earth Friday aboard the TMA-16M spacecraft that carried him into orbit last March with the long-duration crew members. At touchdown, Padalka's total time in space over five missions stood at 878.5 days, a world record.
The planned 341-day flight by Kelly and Kornienko is the longest since the days of the Russian Mir space station. Kelly will have logged some 521 days in space over four missions when he and Kornienko land in March. Kornienko's total will stand at 517 days over two flights.
Four Russian cosmonauts logged a year or more in space during flights aboard the Mir space station, but Kelly said they did not have the advantage of the state-of-the-art equipment aboard the International Space Station.
"We have an ultrasound, we have these devices that measure our vision, next week we're going to do a lot of this imaging and data collection in a Russian device that actually pulls the blood down towards our feet, this lower body negative pressure device," he said.
"From these experiments, we'll hopefully find out of there are any cliffs out there, you know, if our vision gets significantly worse, maybe after nine months or a year."
While Kelly and Kornienko carry out a battery of experiments in orbit, Kelly's twin brother Mark, a former shuttle commander, is serving as a "control, " participating in similar studies on the ground.
Speaking at the National Press Club Monday, Mark Kelly said his role so far is primarily to provide samples of "blood, saliva, other things I'm not going to go into, and be there for MRIs and ultrasounds and even some experiments."
"Sometimes I'll be laying in some kind of contraption and I don't even know what they're trying to figure out!" he said. "It's like, do whatever you need to do. So it's providing data over an extended period of time. ... We'll do this while my brother's in space and then after he gets back for a period of time."
Scott Kelly and Kornienko face a busy second half of their long-duration mission. Kelly and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren plan to carry out two spacewalks Oct. 28 and Nov. 6 and the crew will receive Progress supply ships in October and November and an Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo craft in early December.
It will be the first visit by a Cygnus since a spectacular launch explosion last October. SpaceX, which also delivers cargo to the space station under a commercial contract with NASA, suffered a similar failure in June. The company hopes to resume station visits in November or December.
A fresh three-man crew will reach the space station aboard the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft on Dec. 15. Lindgren and his two crewmates will depart one week later. Kelly, who took over command of the station with Padalka's departure, will remain in charge until he leaves in March.
"I don't really feel like I'm on the down side of this, I have a lot of important work to do, we've got a lot of research on board, a lot of other activities, some spacewalks," Kelly said in a Sept. 9 NASA interview.
"For me, it's really all positive. And I hope I don't get to the point where I start counting the days, I'm going to try not to, I'm going to count up. Every day in space is a great day, and I'll just keep tracking them going forward."
