On Oct. 29 astronaut Scott Kelly will set a new record for the longest continuous stay in space for an American. (Russian astronaut Valeri Polyakov holds the world record for longest space flight at 437.7 days.) Late Monday President Barack Obama tweeted a conversation he had with Kelly to congratulate him on this achievement.
I got a chance to catch up with the @Space_Station crew today. Nothing like a call to space on #AstronomyNight! https://t.co/JVLzYDQ8Jo
— President Obama (@POTUS44) October 20, 2015
Kelly began his stay in March, when he and his identical twin brother, Mark, embarked on an experiment for NASA. Mark stayed on the ground while Scott took to the stars so NASA researchers could see how an extended stay in low-gravity would affect the body. Because Mark and Scott have identical sets of DNA, any genetic changes that occurred to Scott as a result of being in space should be readily apparent.
The data will be used to help assess the risks of long-term spaceflight in humans, in preparation for NASA’s goal of sending a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s.
Astronauts often come back with a host of strange physical changes, like diminished vision and muscular and skeletal atrophy. They’re also exposed to very high levels of radiation from being outside Earth’s protective magnetosphere. On the 280 million mile roundtrip journey to the Red Planet, astronauts will be spending a lot of time potentially exposing themselves to many health risks. Kelly’s experiment will help isolate and identify just what those risks are, so researchers can start finding ways to mitigate them.
And, in the words of the POTUS, “that’s nothing to sneeze at.”
Screengrab via @POTUS/Twitter
