Astronaut Scott Kelly Adjusting To Gravity After Spending 340 Days In Space

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Astronaut Scott Kelly is reacclimating himself to gravity on Earth after spending nearly a year aboard the International Space Station.

Soreness is one of the effects of spending 340 days in zero gravity.

"My legs aren't feeling good," the 52-year-old New Jersey native told CBS2's Manuel Bojorquez. "My legs are a little swollen still from all the fluid that shifts up to our heads in space and gets pushed back down in my legs."

NASA is testing Kelly to determine the effects of a long-duration space travel for a future mission to Mars.

Kelly came with a huge bonus -- his identical twin, astronaut Mark Kelly, who could be studied on Earth to highlight how the time in space impacted Scott.

During his time in space, when he wasn't busy with more than 400 experiments, Kelly had fun. At one point, he floated around in a gorilla costume as part of his personal mission to inspire the next generation of space pioneers.

"I think it's part of our job, our responsibility to do that as the public face of NASA," Kelly said. "Anything we can do to get them excited about studying science, math, engineering, technology is something we should be doing."

Now that he's back on Earth, Kelly said one thing he thoroughly enjoys is being able to sit down for dinner without his fork or glass floating away.