Story highlights
- Astronaut Scott Kelly's spacecraft undocks from the International Space Station
- Kelly has finished his year in space and is heading back to Earth on Tuesday
- The space veteran has lived in space longer than any other U.S. astronaut
(CNN)NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is back on Earth.
Kelly
and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov landed late
Monday night in the Kazakhstan desert, NASA and Russian mission control
said.
Kelly could be seen pumping his fist and giving a thumbs up after being hoisted from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that brought the trio back.
All three underwent field tests immediately after leaving the spacecraft.
Kelly has completed a nearly yearlong mission on the International Space Station, the longest any U.S. astronaut has been in space.
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The prolific social media user posted a photo of the sunrise on Tuesday -- the last one he watched from space.
Spending 340 days in space
could affect a person's vision and bones, but Kelly said last week that
physically, he feels pretty good. "I could go for another 100 days or
100 years," the astronaut said during his last briefing with reporters
from orbit.
But the long stay has also
been lonely. "The hardest part is being isolated from people on the
ground who are important to you," he said.
The space veteran said he has
witnessed some of the most amazing scenes of Earth during his mission,
like spotting the northern lights, passing over the Bahamas and watching
huge storms like Hurricane Patricia.
The view from space
He's
also gained perspective on Earth's climate while he's been orbiting the
planet. "I feel more like an environmentalist since I've been up here,"
he said. "There are parts of the Earth that are covered with pollution
all the time. I saw weather that was unexpected. Storms bigger than
we've seen in the past. This is a human effect. This is not a natural
phenomenon."
In a previous interview with CNN,
Kelly said Earth's atmosphere "looks very, very fragile" from the space
station. But there are opportunities to solve the Earth's environmental
problems, Kelly said Thursday. "If we can dream it, we can make it so,"
he said.
Once Kelly lands, he will be flown to Houston's Ellington Field and go through a battery of physical and scientific tests. Afterward, he's looking forward to jumping into his pool, he said.
Kelly
isn't bringing back any souvenirs -- this is his fourth mission in
space, after all -- but he's looking forward to returning some personal
items when he lands.
One of his
biggest hopes for the Year in Space mission's legacy is that it helps
NASA on its quest to take astronauts farther away from Earth on longer
space flights -- a necessity for traveling to Mars in the future. "The
space station here is a magical place, and an incredible science
facility. I hope more people have the opportunity to do this in the
future," he said.
'Feel like I've lived my whole life up here'
He told CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta last week that it feels like he's spent his whole life on the station and that leaving it is going to be tough.
"I'll
probably never see it again," Kelly told Gupta. "I've flown in space
four times now, so it's going to be hard in that respect, but I
certainly look forward to going back to Earth. I've been up here for a
really long time and sometimes, when I think about it, I feel like I've
lived my whole life up here."
Scott Kelly prepares to return from his year in space 05:40
A
year ago, before he launched, Kelly, 51, joked that he would be taller
than his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly (the husband of
former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords), when he returns, because you get a bit
taller in space. At least briefly.
"You do grow when you're up there for a long time," Kelly said last year. "Unfortunately it doesn't last."
But did he really get taller than his brother? Though he's no longer an astronaut, Mark Kelly volunteered to take part in NASA's "Twins Study"
with his brother. NASA wants to see how the identical twins measure up
after a year in two very different environments -- Scott in space and
Mark on Earth.
Staying in contact
Scott
Kelly also said he would spend a lot of time talking to people on
Earth, messaging on social media -- and he did. He shared many pictures
on Twitter taken from his perch about 200 miles above Earth. (By the way, you can see the space station fly over if you know when and where to look.)
15 photos: Scott Kelly's top shots from space
Kelly also promised to keep a personal journal of his experience on the space station and said that he might share it with us.
"I plan to be completely honest
about it," he said before launch, but -- "who knows, maybe there are
some crazy thoughts I'll have at the end that I wouldn't want to share."
Kelly
also did experiments. Lots and lots of experiments. He and his one-year
crewmate, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, conducted studies to
help NASA better understand what happens to the human body in space: The eyes, brain, bones, muscles -- they all change in a weightless environment.
NASA needs to know a lot more about these changes to the body before it can send people to Mars or on any other long spaceflights.
Riding home with the Russians
Kelly began his mission to the space station on March 27, 2015, riding a Russian rocket that launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
He
is coming home much the same way. When his mission ends, Kelly will
have spent 340 consecutive days on the space station and a total of 520
days in space counting his time from previous trips. Both are records
for U.S. astronauts, but not for Russia. Between 1987 and 1995, four
cosmonauts spent a year or more in space.
Kornienko
also is coming back Tuesday and cosmonaut Sergey Volkov is on the
flight too -- though he did not spend a year on the space station.
Kelly's mission won't end once he lands. NASA will spend years analyzing the tests he conducted on board.