A few hours from now (March 27), U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly will blast off into space on a historic mission that will add immensely to the knowledge of how the human body reacts to long-duration spaceflights like those to Mars.
NASA TV coverage will begin at 2:30 p.m. EDT March 27, with launch scheduled for 3:42 p.m. (1:42 a.m. Saturday, March 28 in Baikonur) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The launch can be viewed live on NASA TV at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Kelly will spend one year on the International Space Station on this experiment. With him on the voyage to the ISS about a Soyuz spacecraft to be launched from Baikonur will be cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).
Both men will be the first one-year crew for the ISS. Kelly will be the American astronaut to have stayed in space for almost a year.
The Russian will also be on the yearlong mission and will also participate in scientific experiments. Both men are to stay on the ISS for 342 days.
The Russians, however, have had four men stay in space for close to a year. One of these men, Valery Polyakov, holds the record for the longest stay in space at 14 months on the Mir space station in 1994 and 1995.
Kelly and Kornienko will spend a year living and working aboard the space station and will launch with cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. The trio will become part of the station's Expedition 43 crew.
The trio will ride to space in a Soyuz spacecraft that will rendezvous with the space station and dock after four orbits of Earth. Docking to the space station's Poisk module will take place at 9:36 p.m. Friday. NASA TV coverage of docking will begin at 8:45 p.m.
Hatches between the Soyuz and the station will be opened at 11:15 p.m., at which time Expedition 43 Commander Terry Virts of NASA and his crewmates, Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency), will greet Kelly, Kornienko and Padalka. Hatch opening coverage begins on NASA TV at 10:45 p.m.
Kelly and Kornienko will spend a year on the space station to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space. Data from the expedition will be used to determine whether there are ways to further reduce the risks on future long-duration missions to an asteroid and eventually Mars.
The crew will support several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science -- research that impacts life on Earth.
Data and samples will be collected throughout the year from a series of studies involving Scott and his twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly. The studies will compare data from the genetically-identical Kelly brothers to identify any subtle changes caused by spaceflight.
The One-Year Mission will focus on seven categories of research. These investigations are expected to yield beneficial knowledge on the medical, psychological and biomedical challenges faced by astronauts during long-duration spaceflight.
The One-Year Mission is a stepping stone to future missions to Mars and beyond.