{"id":15684,"date":"2016-03-04T18:07:36","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T10:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/kelly-describes-re-adaptation-to-gravity-life-on-earth\/"},"modified":"2016-03-04T18:07:36","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T10:07:36","slug":"kelly-describes-re-adaptation-to-gravity-life-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/kelly-describes-re-adaptation-to-gravity-life-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelly describes re-adaptation to gravity, life on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"Credit:
Credit: NASA\/Joel Kowsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Astronaut Scott Kelly, re-adapting to gravity, people and wide open spaces after a record 340 days cooped up aboard the International Space Station, said Friday his muscles and joints are a bit sore \u2014 \u201cjust about all of \u2019em\u201d \u2014 his skin is surprisingly sensitive and \u201cI never felt completely normal up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, Kelly told reporters at the Johnson Space Center that overall, he feels good and that if he had just landed on Mars after a long trip from Earth, he would have been able to do useful work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could have gone longer on this flight is there was a good reason,\u201d he said. \u201cI personally think going to Mars, if it takes two years or two-and-a-half years, yeah, that\u2019s doable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko were launched to the space station last March 27. They returned to Earth, along with Soyuz TMA-18M commander Sergey Volkov, late Tuesday U.S. time, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out their record mission.<\/p>\n

Kelly and Kornienko both appeared remarkably fit after they were pulled from the cramped Soyuz descent module, smiling and chatting with support crews in obvious good spirits. Arriving back in Houston Wednesday night, Kelly said he was glad to be home after \u201ca very long trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I left here, I was 50. And now I\u2019m 52,\u201d he joked. \u201cBut it feels great, it\u2019s great to be back in Texas on U.S. soil. It\u2019s just an unbelievable feeling to be back here on planet Earth, back in our great country and back with all my family and my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

After going home that night, he enjoyed dinner with family and friends and later, walked outside and fell into his swimming pool, fully clothed, posting the video on Twitter. Coming up to the surface, he exclaimed \u201coh man, that feels good!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason I was eager to jump in the pool was because even though I took a shower in Canada (on the way home from Kazakhstan) I hadn\u2019t had running water in 340 days,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something you really miss. \u2026 We make do with not having a shower on board, and it\u2019s not like you feel dirty, but you definitely feel like you would like to jump in a pool. So I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelly flew aboard the station for 159 days in 2010-11 and said he initially felt better after landing this time around than he did the last.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, there\u2019s always a certain amount of soreness and fatigue and that kind of stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cInitially, this time, coming out of the capsule, I felt better than I did last time. But at some point, those two lines have crossed and my level of muscle soreness and fatigue is a lot higher than it was last time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also have an issue with my skin,\u201d he added. \u201cBecause it hadn\u2019t touched anything for so long, had any significant contact, it\u2019s very, very sensitive. It\u2019s almost like a burning feeling where I sit or lie or walk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Problems re-adapting to gravity show up in virtually all aspects of day-to-day life, he said, and in his experience, it is easier to adapt to space than the other way around.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing I tried to throw on a table, I missed,\u201d he said. \u201cI tried to shoot some basketballs yesterday, and I didn\u2019t get any of them in the net. Not that I\u2019m a good basketball player in general anyway. I don\u2019t seem to have a tendency, though, to want to drop things like some people.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut definitely, throwing things, you tend to underestimate the effects of gravity. What\u2019s really harder, though, is throwing something in space straight. You always wind up lofting everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if he had experienced any sort of \u201cculture shock\u201d returning to Earth after nearly a year in space, Kelly said his previous spaceflight experience had prepared him for the sudden presence, or \u201cshock,\u201d of \u201call the people there when you\u2019ve seen so few people for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been very busy since I got back, so I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really hit me yet,\u201d he said. \u201cI think there\u2019ll be a point here pretty soon where I\u2019ll start maybe feeling that kind of culture shock, or whatever else you would want to call that, from having \u2026 so few choices about what you\u2019re going to do every day, what\u2019s available to you, to basically having just about anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelly and Kornienko, along with Scott\u2019s twin brother Mark, a former shuttle commander, are the subjects of wide-ranging research to learn more about the long-term effects of weightlessness and space radiation. The goal is to help engineers and scientists develop the countermeasures necessary to eventually send astronauts on long-duration trips to Mars and beyond.<\/p>\n

Data collection began before launch, continued throughout the flight aboard the space station and will go on for months to come as researchers measure how Kelly and Kornienko re-adapt to gravity. Mark Kelly is participating in research that will look at genetic changes that might have occurred because of Scott\u2019s long flight in the space environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really trying to understand what the advantages are of doing this kind of work and what better way to do it than to compare two individuals who, at least at birth, were fairly identical genetically,\u201d said John Charles, associate manager of NASA\u2019s Human Research Program.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo by looking at Mark\u2019s results collected over the course of the year, we can see what the normal variations might be and then by looking at Scott\u2019s, we can see where his variations are greater than Mark\u2019s. And those will tell us what areas to investigate in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Charles aid it will take many months to analyze all the data from the nearly yearlong mission, including samples still aboard the space station that will not get back to Earth until later this year. For the Kelly twins, that translates into many more months serving as test subjects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have plans for data collection on both Scott and Mark up to nine months after this landing, and that\u2019s just data collection, not even including the analysis time,\u201d Charles said. \u201cJust because the flight\u2019s over doesn\u2019t mean the mission\u2019s over. We\u2019ve got lots of other investigations, lots of other little surprises to spring on Scott and Mark as we continue on in this process.\u201d<\/p>\n

On top of that, NASA typically gives researchers a full year to complete their analysis and publish the results.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this time next year, I\u2019m hopeful we\u2019ll start seeing initial results come out from the investigations that were fairly quickly completed and fairly quickly analyzed, and then I look for a constant stream of insights and results from this mission for at least another year after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a record-setting mission for NASA, Kelly\u2019s flight still falls far short of records set by Russian cosmonauts in the days of the Mir space station. Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov each logged 366 days aloft while Sergei Avdeyev spent 380 days in orbit and Valery Polyakov logged 438 days.<\/p>\n

But state-of-the-art medical technology and procedures are expected to generate an enormous amount of top-quality data on Kelly and Kornienko, data scientists say is critical for developing the countermeasures needed for an eventual flight to Mars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Credit: NASA\/Joel Kowsky Astronaut Scott Kelly, re-adapting to gravity, people and wide open spaces after a record 340 days cooped up aboard the International Space Station, said Friday his muscles and joints are a bit sore \u2014 \u201cjust about all of \u2019em\u201d \u2014 his skin is surprisingly sensitive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3790,3791,3792,3677,1545,717,3726,3793],"class_list":["post-15684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-expedition-43","tag-expedition-44","tag-expedition-45","tag-expedition-46","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-international-space-station","tag-scott-kelly","tag-soyuz-tma-18m"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}