for-all-mankind:T-3 days (24 March, 2015)NASA’s one year mission is in the final stages of preparati

for-all-mankind:T-3 days (24 March, 2015)NASA’s one year mission is in the final stages of preparation before Friday’s blastoff!Expedition 43 will receive three new crew members this Friday including two men who will comprise the outpost’s first-ever year long mission.Although NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will be the first individuals to spend a year aboard the International Space Station, they are not the first to spend an extended period of time in orbit. Numerous cosmonauts on the Russian Mir space station spent ended periods of time on orbit.Their mission will study the human body and how it adapts to extended periods of time in weightlessness. This will give both agency’s necessary knowledge to prepare for human missions to Mars, where the one-way travel time could be from 8-10 months.Seen above, the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft undergoes encapsulation and testing in the Soyuz launch vehicle’s payload fairing. Launch of the one-year mission will occur at 3:42 PM EST Friday, 27 March. Docking to the Poisk module of the ISS will occur just under six hours later, at 9:36 PM. NASA TV will broadcast both events live.Launching with Kelly and Kornienko is Flight Engineer Gennady Padalka. Padalka will serve on Expeditions 43 and 44, becoming commander of the latter. The two year long participants will overlap four different expeditions and will become a part of each - Expeditions 43, 44, 45 and 46. Kelly will become commander of Expeditions 45 and 46. -- source link
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