Russian, American ready for a year in space

Russians Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka and American Scott Kelly are to launch early Saturday Kazakh time aboard a Soyuz space capsule for the International Space Station. Kelly and Kornienko are to stay there until March 2016, while Padalka will be on a six-month mission. At a news conference Thursday at the Russian manned-space facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Kornienko said “we will be missing nature, we will be missing landscapes, woods.” The mission won’t be the longest time that a human has spent in space — four Russians spent a year or more aboard the Soviet-built Mir space station in the 1990s.

If we’re going to go beyond low-Earth orbit again, perhaps to Mars, because of the cost and the complexity it will most likely be an international mission so we see this as a stepping stone to that.

American astronaut Scott Kelly

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