Meet the astronaut Scott Kelly (left). His mission is to spend a whole year on the International Space Station, while some of his friends (Terry Wirts, right) do the usual six-month missions. Carrying twice as much space as usual is not at all that easy. It will be difficult for both Kelly and his loved ones. But, according to NASA, the results of the mission of Kelly and Mikhail Kornienka someday be useful for traveling to Mars. Live with Kelly for the first 100 days, looking at photos taken by the astronaut himself.
In cramped and not mad
This is Kelly's bedroom. It seems that one half of it belongs to computers! When Kelly needs to sleep or just be alone with himself, he uses this particular department. While the space station provides a lot of space for living and working compared to, say, the space shuttle, it should be noted that there is still very little space aboard. The main space of the orbital laboratory is set aside for experiments and storage of food, equipment and everything necessary.
Feel at home
Imagine how many things Kelly has to do without a whole year: gravity, air from a window or a walk, family. The father of the family, undoubtedly, has to sacrifice something for the sake of his work, therefore the partners of the space station take care to bring even a little home comfort into his life. On board, astronauts are provided with the Internet - so they can regularly communicate with their families. Deliveries to the spacecraft include fresh fruit and personal pleasure. Recently, for example, the first espresso machine, which Kelly is already testing, was delivered to the station.
Beauty as a Threat
The great advantage of space research is the ability to look out the window. Astronauts should conduct regular weather observations to improve satellite observations, especially during a storm or volcanic eruption. Depending on the location of the satellite, astronauts can see the whole course of the incident earlier than the car. This is a snapshot of a tropical storm Anna in May, when he was still in the subtropics. Kelly also talked about the floods in Texas and the destruction of the glacier in Canada.
Saturday Self
Kelly regularly spends her short free time on Twitter to keep people interested in his work. Together with NASA, he periodically holds competitions in which people try to guess the terrain on Earth from the photograph he made. And usually on Saturdays, he also takes a selfie. Here you can see two selfies shot in a row. The yellow tint of the first is due to the light reflected from the bright African desert, and the cool blue tint of the second is due to the waters of the Mediterranean.
Delay in deliveries aboard
The alarming news related to the delivery to the International Space Station has overtaken space recently. Three cargo ships from different points were lost during the last eight months, even during launch or immediately after it. One of these failures delayed the departure of the crew of the Soyuz spacecraft from the space station. But NASA states that the station still has enough reserves, and Kelly himself remains calm in his communications to Earth. “No one said it would be easy in space,” he said after one of the failures.
Overhaul
This is probably the last United States snapshot taken from this window. The module “Calm”, as Kelly said in social media. What for? Shortly after this snapshot, several members of his crew pushed the orbital closet, blocking the view from the window. This is part of the complex replacement of equipment on the space station to prepare it for a commercial spacecraft. Around 2017, NASA plans to replace most of the seats of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft with American ones.
Fruits are finally
On the hundredth day of Kelly’s mission, the Russian spacecraft Progress finally reached the station. Among the many supplies needed was a treat for the team in the form of fruits. Kelly called it “Christmas in July,” and joked that there were only 250 days left. But when Kelly and Kornienko reach this milestone, they will enter a small group of people who have lived a year or more in space (the Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who lived 437 days in 1995 aboard the Mir space station), spent the longest solitary stay in space.
