
The record is all his now, and it'll be a tough one to break.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly just broke a U.S. space record, and it’s a big one.
Kelly now holds the U.S. record for the most days spent in space after hitting his 383rd day — that’s more than a year — of floating above our atmosphere on the International Space Station, according to a USA Today report.
And there are other records that will fall as well. Later this month, he’ll hold the record the longest spaceflight by an American astronaut at 216 consecutive days, beating out Michael Lopez-Alegria back in 2006.
Kelly was characteristically humble about his accomplishment, tweeting yesterday that records were “meant to be broken,” and that he’ll probably have his own record broken quite soon, especially once NASA starts sending astronauts to Mars, which will be a long journey in and of itself.
Kelly has a lot longer to go. he is scheduled to stay in space until March 3, 2016, ending his bid at 522 total days on four missions.
Scott Kelly has practically become the face of NASA and of the space program in general, a role he has embraced. He interacts quite a bit with the public and is an active tweeter, broadcasting his thoughts to everyone below him on Earth on a regular basis.
Kelly is a retired U.S. Navy Captain and a veteran of three previous missions. He had been selected to this special year-long mission aboard the ISS back in November 2012. He was the commander of Expedition 26 on the ISS. His brother, Mark, is his identical twin, and also an astronaut, making them the only sibling duo to travel into space.
Kelly’s first trip to space came all the way back in 1999 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.
That mission involved working on the famed Hubble Space Telescope, and lasted for about eight days. His next spaceflight didn’t come until August 2007.
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