Photo by Scott Kelly, taken during historic year aboard the International Space Station. Image: www.nasa.gov.

Astronaut Scott Kelly has returned to earth. Along with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and Soyuz TMA-18M commander Sergey Volkov,  Kelly touched down in Kazakhstan, after completing a year in space on the International Space Station. He sent back some pictures. Kelly is a twin; brother Mark will serve as control in the experiment on the effects of long-term space residency, such as would be needed for missions to Mars. Another area of Mars preparation takes COMSAT to the next level; the interplanetary internet is currently in development by Nasa and partners.

Thanks to Sheila M. Turney for photo suggestion.

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License