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| NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (right) and Roscosmos' Mikhail Kornienko (left) |
Washington: NASA, the Russian Federal
Space Agency (Roscosmos), and their international partners have selected two
veteran spacefarers for a one-year mission aboard the International Space
Station in 2015. This mission will include collecting scientific data important
to future human exploration of our solar system. NASA has selected Scott Kelly
and Roscosmos has chosen Mikhail Kornienko.
Kelly and Kornienko will launch aboard a
Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in spring
2015 and will land in Kazakhstan in spring 2016. Kelly and Kornienko already
have a connection; Kelly was a backup crew member for the station's Expedition
23/24 crews, where Kornienko served as a flight engineer.
The goal of their yearlong expedition aboard
the orbiting laboratory is to understand better how the human body reacts and
adapts to the harsh environment of space. Data from the 12-month expedition
will help inform current assessments of crew performance and health and will
determine better and validate countermeasures to reduce the risks associated
with future exploration as NASA plans for missions around the moon, an asteroid
and ultimately Mars.
"Congratulations to Scott and Mikhail on
their selection for this important mission," said William Gerstenmaier,
associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. "Their skills and previous experience aboard
the space station align with the mission's requirements. The one-year increment
will expand the bounds of how we live and work in space and will increase our
knowledge regarding the effects of microgravity on humans as we prepare for
future missions beyond low-Earth orbit."
"Selection of the candidate for the one
year mission was thorough and difficult due to the number of suitable
candidates from the Cosmonaut corps," said head of Russian Federal Space
Agency, Vladimir Popovkin. "We have chosen the most responsible, skilled
and enthusiastic crew members to expand space exploration, and we have full
confidence in them."
Kelly, a retired captain in the U.S. Navy, is
from West Orange, N.J. He has degrees from the State University of New York
Maritime College and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He served as a
pilot on space shuttle mission STS-103 in 1999, commander on STS-118 in 2007,
flight engineer on the International Space Station Expedition 25 in 2010 and
commander of Expedition 26 in 2011. Kelly has logged more than 180 days in
space.
Kornienko is from the Syzran, Kuibyshev region
of Russia. He is a former paratrooper officer and graduated from the Moscow
Aviation Institute as a specialist in airborne systems. He has worked in the
space industry since 1986 when he worked at Rocket and Space
Corporation-Energia as a spacewalk handbook specialist. He was selected as an
Energia test cosmonaut candidate in 1998 and trained as an International Space
Station Expedition 8 backup crew member. Kornienko served as a flight engineer
on the station's Expedition 23/24 crews in 2010 and has logged more than 176
days in space.
During the 12 years of permanent human
presence aboard the International Space Station, scientists and researchers
have gained valuable, and often surprising, data on the effects of microgravity
on bone density, muscle mass, strength, vision and other aspects of human
physiology. This yearlong stay will allow for greater analysis of these effects
and trends.
Kelly and Kornienko will begin a two-year
training program in the United States, Russia and other partner nations
starting early next year.