The Year in Space has liftoff!

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

And we have liftoff! A Soyuz TMA-16M rocket carrying NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka is en route to the International Space Station, marking the beginning of the Year in Space mission.

The spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:42 pm ET Friday afternoon, embarking on a roughly six-hour journey to the space station. Once they arrive, they will join American commander Terry Virts, Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Italian flight engineer Samantha Cristoforetti as members of the Expedition 43 crew.

Padalka will remain on the space station for six months, while Kelly and Kornienko will spend an entire calendar year there, returning to Earth on the Soyuz TMA-18M in March 2016, NASA explained earlier this week. The length of the their stay will help scientists better understand how the human body and mind will react to long-term spaceflight.

“This knowledge is critical as NASA looks toward human journeys deeper into the solar system, including to and from Mars, which could last 500 days or longer,” the agency said. While Scott Kelly is on the ISS, his twin brother Mark will be monitored by researchers on Earth, and each of them will undergo a series of tests to track their physical and psychological health.

As the US space agency noted on Thursday, those tests “will track any degeneration or evolution that occurs in the human body from extended exposure to a zero-gravity environment.” The data will be shared between both NASA and Roscosmos in what has been called “an important step in reducing cost and improving efficiency for all future space station research.”

Important stepping stone in the #JourneyToMars

NASA said that the One Year Mission and Twin Study project will include 400 experiments designed to benefit both Earth and the space agency’s proposed mission to Mars. Among the topics that will be covered include sleep monitoring, cognitive performance assessments, and studies on how spending an extended amount of time in a weightless environment have on a person’s immune system, vision, bone density, muscle mass and metabolism.

[STORY: NASA’s Year in Space begins today]

In an op-ed piece penned for Space.com on Friday, NASA administrator Charles Bolden wrote, “Today, we launch an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut to live and work in space for an entire year… It’s an important stepping-stone on our journey to Mars, and will give us detailed medical data recorded throughout the one-year expedition.”

“This mission is part of the critical road map we’ve been undertaking with bipartisan support since the president challenged us five years ago to plan for a human mission to an asteroid and later to Mars,” Bolden continued, adding that Kelly “is helping us reach higher and take those next great leaps in exploration. His historic mission is one more sign that our nation’s space program is thriving and continues to lead the world.”

Settting records

The 51-year-old Kelly will spend 342 days off the planet as part of the mission, twice as long as any previous US astronaut (the previous record of seven months was set by NASA’s Michael Lopez-Alegria from September 2006 to April 2007). When added to his previous service, Kelly’s combined 522 days in space will also set a new American record, according to CNN.com.

Despite being a veteran of three space flights, Kelly admitted back in January that this mission would be “a significantly different experience. Being aboard the International Space Station more than twice the duration of my previous flights will not be easy, but I am looking forward to the challenge.”

[VIDEO: Orion’s heat shield arrives at MSFC]

His Year In Space colleague Padalka will establish a new world record for most cumulative time in space for a human. He has already logged more than 710 days in space, which includes a prior mission on the Russian Mir space station and three prior stints on the ISS, CNN added.

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