For the first time in the history of NASA astronauts, one man will spend one year in the International Space Station, as scientists in the National Aeronautics and Space Agency tackle on the subject of how the human body reacts to spaceflights of a long duration - although Russian cosmonauts have done this before.
As Food World News reported in the first weeks of 2015, the mission will be launching two Russian cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut: from the Eurasian nation, it'll be Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka (the former of whom will also be staying for a year, while Padalka will spend only six months), while the American space traveler will be Scott Kelly.
According to CNN, the launch of the NASA astronaut into the ISS will occur this Friday at 3:42 EST, as the three-man crew rides a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station to stay for an entire year, which is twice as long as any American space traveler has ever stayed in zero gravity.
As NBC reports, the NASA astronaut's mission, which is technically set to last for 342 days (barely a few days short of a year) isn't a record-breaker in itself, as there have already been three Russian cosmonauts who'd stayed longer in MIR: Valeri Polyakov (437.7 days), Sergei Avdeyev (379.6 days) and Vladimir Titov; all of them from missions between 1987 and 1995.
However, this is certainly the first time a NASA astronaut goes through this ordeal, which has been said to produce long-term effects. There's an interesting twist to the experiment of Scott's health, however: throughout the duration of the mission, his health will be compared with that of his identical twin brother Mark on Earth - and Mark himself is actually a retired astronaut.
As Discover Magazine reports, this is one of NASA's steps towards the planned mission towards Mars in a few years' time, as they hope to find the effects on the human body for a NASA astronaut-manned mission to the red planet.
