Contemporary Authors

• My Journey to the Stars ( memoir; picture book) Crown Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 2017
• Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery ( memoir) Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 2017
• Infinite Wonder: An Astronaut's Photographs from a Year in Space Alfred A Knopf (New York, NY), 2018

1. Infinite wonder : an astronaut's photographs from a year in space LCCN 2018003093 Type of material Book Personal name Kelly, Scott, 1964- photographer. Uniform title Photographs. Selections Main title Infinite wonder : an astronaut's photographs from a year in space / Scott Kelly. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Alfred A Knopf, 2018. Projected pub date 1810 Description pages cm ISBN 9781524731847 (hardcover) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. Infinite wonder : an astronaut's photographs from a year in space LCCN 2018005350 Type of material Book Personal name Kelly, Scott, 1964- photographer. Uniform title Photographs. Selections Main title Infinite wonder : an astronaut's photographs from a year in space / Scott Kelly. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Alfred A Knopf, 2018. Projected pub date 1810 Description 1 online resource. ISBN 9780525521624 (Ebook) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 3. Endurance : a year in space, a lifetime of discovery LCCN 2017024799 Type of material Book Personal name Kelly, Scott, 1964- author. Main title Endurance : a year in space, a lifetime of discovery / Scott Kelly with Margaret Lazarus Dean. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. Description 387 pages, [24] pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm ISBN 9781524731595 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER TL789.85.K45 A3 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 4. My journey to the stars LCCN 2017011226 Type of material Book Personal name Kelly, Scott, 1964- author. Main title My journey to the stars / astronaut Scott Kelly with Emily Easton ; illustrations by Andre Ceolin. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Crown Books for Young Readers, [2017] Description 1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 29 cm ISBN 9781524763770 (hc) CALL NUMBER TL789.85.K45 K45 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Scott Kelly Home Page - http://www.scottkelly.com/

  SCOTT KELLY
  Scott Kelly is a former military fighter pilot and test pilot, an engineer, a retired astronaut, and a retired U.S. Navy captain. A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission to the ISS. In October 2015, he set the record for the total accumulated number of days spent in space, the single longest space mission by an American astronaut. He lives in Houston, Texas.

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Kelly_(astronaut)

  Scott Kelly (astronaut)
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  This article is about the astronaut Scott J. Kelly. For the musician Scott M. Kelly, see Scott Kelly (musician).
  Scott Kelly
  Scott J. Kelly.jpg
  NASA Astronaut
  Nationality American
  Status Retired
  Born Scott Joseph Kelly
  February 21, 1964 (age 54)
  Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
  Rank US-O6 insignia.svg Captain, USN
  Time in space
  520d[1]
  Selection NASA Astronaut Group 16, 1996
  Total EVAs
  3
  Total EVA time
  18 hours and 20 minutes
  Missions STS-103, STS-118, Soyuz TMA-01M (Expedition 25/26), Soyuz TMA-16M/Soyuz TMA-18M (Expedition 43/44/45/46)
  Mission insignia
  Sts-103-patch.png STS-118 patch new.svg Soyuz-TMA-01M-Mission-Patch.svg ISS Expedition 25 Patch.png ISS Expedition 26 Patch.png Soyuz-TMA-16M-Mission-Patch.png ISS Yearlong mission patch.png ISS Expedition 43 Patch.svg ISS Expedition 44 Patch.svg ISS Expedition 45 Patch.png ISS Expedition 46 Patch.svg
  Spouse(s) Leslie S. Yandell (d. 2009)
  Children 2
  Relatives Mark Kelly (twin brother)
  Scott Joseph Kelly (born February 21, 1964 in Orange, New Jersey) is an engineer, retired American astronaut, and a retired U.S. Navy Captain. A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on Expeditions 26, 45, and 46.

  Kelly's first spaceflight was as pilot of Space Shuttle Discovery, during STS-103 in December 1999. This was the third servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, and lasted for just under eight days. Kelly's second spaceflight was as mission commander of STS-118, a 12-day Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station in August 2007. Kelly's third spaceflight was as commander of Expedition 26 on the ISS. He arrived 9 October 2010, on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft,[2] during Expedition 25, and served as a flight engineer until it ended.[3] He took over command of the station on 25 November 2010, at the start of Expedition 26 which began officially when the spacecraft Soyuz TMA-19 undocked, carrying the previous commander of the station, Douglas H. Wheelock.[4] Expedition 26 ended on 16 March 2011 with the departure of Soyuz TMA-01M. This was Kelly's first long-duration spaceflight.

  In November 2012, Kelly was selected, along with Mikhail Korniyenko, for a special 340 day so called year-long mission to the International Space Station.[5][6][7] Their year in space commenced 27 March 2015 with the start of Expedition 43, continued through the entirety of Expeditions 44, and 45, both of which Kelly commanded. He passed command to Timothy Kopra[8] on 29 February 2016, when the ISS 11-month mission ended. He returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-18M on 1 March 2016.

  In October 2015, he set the record for the total accumulated number of days spent in space by an American astronaut, 520. This record was broken in 2016 by astronaut Jeff Williams and in 2017 by astronaut Peggy Whitson. For the so-called ISS year long mission, Kelly spent 340 consecutive days (11 months, 3 days) in space.[9] Kelly's identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, is a former astronaut. The Kelly brothers are the only siblings to have traveled in space.[5][10] On March 12, 2016, Kelly announced his retirement for April 2016.[11]

  Contents
  1 Early life and education
  2 Naval career
  3 NASA career
  3.1 Spaceflight experience
  3.1.1 STS-103
  3.1.2 STS-118
  3.1.3 Soyuz TMA-01M
  3.1.4 ISS Expedition 25
  3.1.5 ISS Expedition 26
  3.2 Year-long mission
  4 Post NASA
  5 Personal life
  6 Organizations
  7 Awards
  7.1 Honors
  8 Bibliography
  8.1 Books
  8.2 Articles
  9 See also
  10 References
  11 External links
  Early life and education
  Kelly was born in Orange, New Jersey, to Patricia and Richard Kelly, and raised in the nearby community of West Orange. Kelly is of Irish descent. He attended Mountain High School along with his identical twin brother Mark. While in high school, Kelly worked as an emergency medical technician. He graduated from Mountain High School in 1982.[12]:32-41[8][13]

  Kelly received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York Maritime College[14] in 1987, and an M.S. degree in Aviation Systems from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1996.

  Naval career
  Scott Kelly received his commission via the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC). He was designated a Naval Aviator in July 1989 at Naval Air Station Chase Field in Beeville, Texas.

  He reported to Fighter Squadron 101 (VF-101) at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, for initial F-14 Tomcat training. Upon completion of this training, he was assigned to Fighter Squadron 143 (VF-143) and made overseas deployments to the North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and Persian Gulf aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  Scott Kelly was selected to attend the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland in January 1993 and completed training in June 1994. After graduation, he worked as a test pilot at the Strike Aircraft Test Squadron, Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division, at Patuxent River, flying the F-14A/B/D, F/A-18A/B/C/D and KC-130F. Kelly was the first pilot to fly an F-14 with an experimental digital flight control system installed and performed subsequent high angle of attack and departure testing.

  He has logged more than 8,000 flight-hours in more than 40 different aircraft and spacecraft. Kelly has made more than 250 carrier landings.

  After attaining the rank of Captain in the U.S. Navy, Kelly retired from active duty on June 1, 2012 after 25 years of Naval service and continued to serve as an astronaut and civil servant until his second retirement in April 2016.

  NASA career

  S. Kelly on EVA at ISS in November 2015
  Selected by NASA in April 1996, Kelly reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. On completion of training, he was assigned to technical duties in the Astronaut Office Spacecraft Systems/Operations Branch.

  Kelly was assigned to flight status on NASA's Space Shuttle program, officially designated Space Transportation System, or STS. After Kelly's first flight on STS-103 he served as NASA’s Director of Operations in Star City, Russia. Kelly was a back-up crew member for ISS Expedition 5. He also served as the Astronaut Office Space Station Branch Chief.

  In September 2002, Kelly served as the commander of the NEEMO 4 mission aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory, four miles off shore from Key Largo. Kelly and his crewmates spent five days saturation diving from Aquarius as a space analogue for working and training under extreme environmental conditions. The mission was delayed due to Hurricane Isadore, forcing National Undersea Research Center (NURC) managers to shorten it to an underwater duration of five days. Then, three days into their underwater mission, the crew members were told that Tropical Storm Lili was headed in their direction and to prepare for an early departure from Aquarius. Fortunately, Lili degenerated to the point where it was no longer a threat, so the crew was able to remain the full five days.[15][16] In April 2005, Kelly was a crew member on the NEEMO 8 mission.[17]

  Spaceflight experience
  STS-103
  Kelly was the pilot of STS-103 Discovery (December 19–27, 1999), on an eight-day mission during which the crew successfully installed new instruments and upgraded systems on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Enhancing HST scientific capabilities required three space walks. Travelling 3,200,000 mi (5,100,000 km) in space, the STS-103 mission was accomplished in 120 Earth orbits, spanning 191 hours and 11 minutes.[8]

  STS-118

  The crew of STS-118, a Space Shuttle mission on which Kelly served as mission commander
  Kelly served as mission commander of STS-118 Endeavour (August 8–21, 2007), the 119th Space Shuttle flight, the 22nd flight to the station and the 20th flight for Endeavour. During the mission, Endeavour's crew successfully added a truss segment, a new gyroscope and external spare parts platform to the International Space Station. A new system that enables docked shuttles to draw electrical power from the station to extend visits to the outpost was activated successfully.

  During and after the mission, the media focused heavily on a small puncture in the heat shield, created by a piece of insulation foam that came off the external tank of Endeavour during liftoff. Foam impact was the cause of the destruction of Space Shuttle Columbia, but the extent of damage was very small in comparison and in a less critical area.[18]

  Four spacewalks (EVAs) were performed by three crew members. Endeavour carried some 5,000 lb (2,300 kg) of equipment and supplies to the station and returned to Earth with some 4,000 lb (1,800 kg) of hardware and no longer needed equipment. Travelling 5,300,000 miles (8,500,000 km) in space, the STS-118 mission was completed in 12 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes and 34 seconds.[8]

  Soyuz TMA-01M

  Kelly in Moscow with the prime and backup crews for this mission, 2010
  Kelly flew to the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-01M from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:10 pm EDT on Thursday, October 7, 2010 (5:10 am Friday in Kazakhstan). Aboard the Soyuz rocket with Kelly were Soyuz Commander Aleksandr Kaleri of Russia and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka.[19]

  TMA-01M is the first of a new generation of the Soyuz spacecraft. Kelly discussed the upgrades in a pre-flight interview: "The improvements are rather significant. The displays that the cosmonauts and myself—although my role in the Soyuz is somewhat minor—use to control the vehicle have been upgraded to make flying it easier. It’s less operator-intensive, but the main and most important change is they have a new, what we would refer to as a flight control computer. So the computer that operates the systems on board is new and the software is new.

  "Now the software is written in a way to kind of model the previous algorithms that control the vehicle but it is new software and it is new hardware, most of which has been tested on the Progress, Russian resupply vehicles, but the Progress doesn’t re-enter the same way as the Soyuz does so when we come home in March it’ll be the first time that this new flight control computer and the entry software will be demonstrated in flight."[20]

  ISS Expedition 25
  Kelly, Aleksandr Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka arrived at the International Space Station on October 9, 2010. Kelly served as flight engineer during his time on Expedition 25.[2] October 9 marked the beginning of the second part of Expedition 25 bringing the number of people aboard the ISS to six. The rest of the crew included Commander Douglas H. Wheelock, along with flight engineers Shannon Walker and Fyodor Yurchikhin.

  ISS Expedition 26

  Kelly posing for the Expedition 26 crew picture on July 16, 2010
  Kelly was the commander of Expedition 26 which began on November 25, 2010, when half of the crew of Expedition 25 returned to Earth on Soyuz TMA-19.[21] On January 8, 2011, with over two months remaining in the mission, Kelly's sister-in-law Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson. Kelly returned to Earth at the conclusion of the mission, landing in Kazakhstan on March 16, 2011. He traveled directly to Houston to see his brother and Giffords.[22]

  Prior to his mission, Kelly was asked about what it would be like to command the ISS: "Certainly as the commander you’re responsible for safety and the health of your people and making sure they have everything they need to do their jobs. I’ll certainly be conscious of those things but we’re all professionals, we all understand what we need to do, and we’re all kind of self-starters and kind of take care of ourselves very well so it shouldn’t be much different than when Doug Wheelock, the previous commander, was in charge."[20]

  During Kelly’s time aboard the International Space Station (including Expeditions 25 and 26), there were several space vehicle visits.[20] These included:

  A Russian Soyuz spacecraft arrived with the rest of the Expedition 26 crew
  Two Progress resupply vehicles
  A European resupply Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)
  A Japanese HTV-2, the second JapaneseH-II Transfer Vehicle
  Space shuttle mission STS-133
  Problems with the launch of Discovery pushed shuttle mission STS-134 beyond the time of Kelly's stay aboard the ISS. STS-134 was commanded by Kelly's brother Mark.

  Year-long mission
  Main article: ISS year long mission

  Patch for yearlong mission

  Kelly with President Barack Obama in January 2015
  In November 2012, NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and their international partners selected two veteran spacefarers for a so-called one-year mission (actually 11 months) aboard the International Space Station in 2015. This mission includes collecting scientific data important to future human exploration of our solar system. NASA selected Scott Kelly and Roscosmos chose Mikhail Korniyenko. Kelly and Korniyenko launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 27, 2015[7][23] and landed in Kazakhstan on March 1, 2016 (U.S. time).[24] Kelly and Korniyenko already had a connection; Kelly was a backup crew member for the station's Expedition 23/24 crews, where Korniyenko served as a flight engineer. The goal of their year-long (11 month) expedition aboard the orbiting laboratory is to understand better how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space.[25] Data from the 12-month expedition will help inform current assessments of crew performance and health and will determine better and validate countermeasures to reduce the risks associated with future exploration as NASA plans for missions around the moon, an asteroid and ultimately Mars.[26] Part of this research also includes a comparative study on the genetic effects of spaceflight with Scott’s twin brother Mark as the ground control subject. According to Christopher Mason, “Seven percent of the genes that changed their expression during spaceflight were still altered after six months back on Earth." [27][28]

  On January 8, 2016, Kelly appeared in the thank you note segment of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, with the first ever thank you note from space.[29]

  Kelly’s 11 months in space included 5,440 orbits around the Earth and he conducted three spacewalks before returning home in March 2016.[10]

  On March 12, 2016, Astronaut Scott Kelly announced his retirement from NASA effective April 1, 2016.[30]

  Post NASA
  External video
  After Words interview with Kelly on Endurance, December 23, 2017, C-SPAN
  Scott Kelly was appointed as United Nations Champion for Space by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), in November 2016. As a champion for space, Kelly will help raise awareness of UNOOSA outreach and activities, and especially the upcoming UNISPACE+50 event in June 2018. The Champion for Space role is based on the United Nations Messengers of Peace model, and Kelly's term will be for an initial period of two years.[31]

  Kelly's memoir, Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery, discusses his NASA career and reflects upon his famous 340-day mission in space. Published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2017, the book was co-written with Margaret Lazarus Dean.[32]

  Personal life
  Kelly was married to Leslie Kelly and has two daughters, Samantha and Charlotte. He is now engaged to Amiko Kauderer, a former Public Affairs Officer for NASA.[33] His sister-in-law is Gabrielle Giffords, the former congresswoman from Arizona.

  Organizations
  Kelly is an Associate Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and a member of the Association of Space Explorers.[8]

  Awards
  He has received the following awards and decorations:[8]

  Naval Aviator Badge.jpg United States Naval Aviator Badge
  Ribbon Description Notes
  Bronze oak leaf cluster Defense Superior Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster
  Legion of Merit
  Distinguished Flying Cross ribbon.svg Distinguished Flying Cross
  Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal ribbon.svg Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal
  Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal ribbon.svg Navy Achievement Medal
  U.S. Navy Unit Commendation ribbon.svg Navy Unit Commendation
  NasaDisRib.gif NASA Distinguished Service Medal
  USA - NASA Excep Rib.png NASA Exceptional Service Medal
  NASA Outstanding Leadership Ribbon.png NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal
  Gold starGold star NASA Space Flight Medal Three awards
  Bronze star National Defense Service Medal Two awards
  Southwest Asia Service Medal ribbon (1991–2016).svg Southwest Asia Service Medal
  Navy and Marine Corps Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.svg Navy Sea Service Deployment Ribbon
  Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia) ribbon.svg Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia)
  Kuwait Liberation Medal (Kuwait) ribbon.svg Kuwait Liberation Medal (Kuwait)
  Medal For Merit in an Space Exploration (Russia 2010) ribbon.svg Medal "For Merit in Space Exploration" Russian Federation
  Honors
  1999 - Korolev Diploma from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale
  2008 - Honorary Doctorate of Science degree from the State University of New York
  2014 - Time Magazine cover December 29, 2014
  2015 - Time "The 100 Most Influential People" for 2015 [34]
  2016 - The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) has appointed Scott Kelly as United Nations Champion for Space.[31]
  Bibliography
  This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
  Books
  Kelly, Scott (2017). Endurance : a year in space, a lifetime of discovery. With Margaret Lazarus Dean. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  Articles
  Kelly, Scott (August 2017). "Space odyssey". National Geographic. 232 (2): 66–75.[35]
  See also
  Ten longest human space flights
  A Beautiful Planet - IMAX documentary film showing scenes of Earth which features Kelly and other ISS astronauts.

• Space - https://www.space.com/32907-scott-kelly-astronaut-biography.html

  Astronaut Scott Kelly: Biography
  By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | January 24, 2018 07:15pm ET
  MORE
  Astronaut Scott Kelly: Biography
  Scott Kelly returned to Earth from the International Space Station March 1 after 340 days as part of NASA's ambitious yearlong space station mission.
  Credit: NASA
  Scott Kelly is a former NASA astronaut who is best known for spending nearly a year on the International Space Station and for spending 520 days in space, which puts him on the list of Americans who have spent the most time in space. (The current record-holder is Peggy Whitson, at 665 days.)

  He did two long-duration space station missions and two shorter-duration space shuttle missions between 1999 and 2015. Kelly is the twin brother of Mark Kelly, who also was a NASA astronaut.

  Kelly's scientific goal during the one-year mission was to better understand how the human body adapts to lengthy periods in space. Most ISS missions are only five to six months in length. While longer missions of approximately a year (in one case more than 400 days) took place on the Mir space station in the 1990s, modern medicine has made it easier to measure changes in the genes.

  Kelly and Russian colleague Mikhail Kornienko both spent 340 consecutive days on the ISS tracking how their bodies changed. Kelly also did a "twin study" with his brother to see if there are any genetic changes from spending long periods of time in space.

  Kelly snaps one of the coolest selfies ever taken—himself suited up for a spacewalk.
  Kelly snaps one of the coolest selfies ever taken—himself suited up for a spacewalk.
  Credit: Scott Kelly (via Twitter as @StationCDRKelly)
  Applying for NASA
  Scott was the second of the two brothers to be born, on Feb. 21, 1964. According to the twins in a 2010 NASA interview, their parents didn't tell them who was the oldest until the boys were in their teens.

  "Our parents weren't — they didn't want to tell who was older because they thought maybe that person would then have some leverage or something like that," Kelly said at the time. "So, we didn't know who was older or who was younger until probably, you know, thirteen to fifteenish."

  The brothers were born and grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, also known as one of the places where Thomas Edison lived. They were close enough to Manhattan to spend the weekend there or head to a museum. In high school, they were co-captains of the swim team and participated in track, baseball and football.

  Initially, Mark and Scott took different paths after university. Mark joined the Navy, and received a bachelor's degree in marine engineering and nautical science from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1986. In 1994, he received a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.

  Scott received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the State University of New York Maritime College in 1987 and a master's degree in aviation systems from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1996. He then went to the University of Maryland and considered becoming a doctor. After spending a year there, Scott decided to follow his interest in flying airplanes and switched into the Navy — putting him a year behind Mark.

  The twins, however, ended up in the same test pilot school class. "Most test pilots apply at some point to the astronaut program," Mark recalled in the same interview, and the twins put in their applications for the 1996 NASA astronaut class. Both were accepted. [Related: Twins in Space: NASA's Twin Astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly (Photos)]

  Spaceflight experience
  Scott Kelly made it to orbit very quickly after becoming an astronaut. Only three years later, he was the pilot for STS-103, a shuttle mission that upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope. His crew spent eight days in December 1999 in space (including celebrating Christmas there), where their main duties were to install instruments and upgrade systems on Hubble.

  Kelly held many roles in between missions, including director of operations in Star City, Russia, and being a backup for ISS Expedition 5. His next mission, STS-118 on space shuttle Endeavour, was in 2007. This was a construction flight for the International Space Station that added a gyroscope, a truss and a new spare parts platform.

  Kelly then switched launch vehicles to a Soyuz for his next flight into space, his first long-duration space station mission. He launched in October 2010 and spent 159 days aboard the ISS, including serving as commander of Expedition 26.

  Around this time, NASA and Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, were discussing sending up an astronaut-cosmonaut team to the space station for an entire year. Scientists hailed it as a way to improve the knowledge of the human body in microgravity, especially because NASA is hoping to have a human mission to Mars someday.

  Kelly ended up being one of only a few astronauts at NASA who qualified for the mission. This was both because of his experience (he was already a veteran of three spaceflights at this point) and also because his radiation exposure had not yet hit the lifetime limit for NASA astronauts. He later said in interviews that he initially was hesitant to take a year away from home, but as he warmed up to the idea he was happy to go.

  Astronaut Scott Kelly took this image of himself on the ISS on Feb. 11, 2016 and posted on his twitter account. He wrote, “Day 321 of my #YearInSpace, 500 days in space total.”
  Astronaut Scott Kelly took this image of himself on the ISS on Feb. 11, 2016 and posted on his twitter account. He wrote, “Day 321 of my #YearInSpace, 500 days in space total.”
  Credit: Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly)
  Eventful expeditions
  Kelly and Kornienko (along with veteran cosmonaut Gennady Padalka) launched to the ISS on March 27, 2015. The team took a fast track to the ISS that got them there in only a few hours, unlike the past procedure that would take about two days to get to the station.

  The early days of Kelly's mission were a bit more eventful than anyone expected. A series of cargo ships from different companies and countries failed upon launch to the ISS in the space of a few months. In a documentary that ran on PBS in March 2016, one commentator said the astronauts on board came close to rationing food until successful launches resumed.

  Kelly, however, remained focused on doing a good job in space. He performed three spacewalks, took charge of a moldy plant experiment and saved the zinnia flowers within it, and served as commander for Expeditions 45 and 46. He also sent regular tweets and social media updates, and held press conferences, to keep the public informed. (In the documentary, he later said he was surprised by the amount of interest the public had in his mission.) [Infographic: How the Epic One-Year Space Station Mission Works]

  The veteran astronaut arrived safely on Earth again on March 2, 2016, after 520 days in space (340 of them consecutively on the one-year mission). In a press conference after the long journey from Kazakhstan to the United States, Kelly expressed enthusiasm for going back to space— but as a part of a private spaceflight, as he felt it was time for younger NASA astronauts to get flight assignments. Kelly retired from NASA on April 1, 2016. [Related: Astronaut Scott Kelly is Home, But the Science Continues]

  Post-flight activities
  Kelly has remained active in spaceflight activities even after retiring from NASA. In fall 2017, his book "Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery" (Viking, 2017) was published. The name appeared to be inspired by Alfred Lansing's 1959 book "Endurance", about Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition. Kelly brought a copy of Lansing's book with him to space during his last mission, and left it behind in the space station's small library when he came back to Earth, he recalled in the biography.

  "At some point, somebody said to me that this really was a mission of endurance, not only in space, but from the time I was a kid," Kelly said in an interview with collectSPACE in October 2017. "It was an example of sticking your nose to the grindstone and just plugging away at it ... When I heard that, I thought it was a pretty good idea for a title for the book, especially because of the connection I had with 'Endurance' and Shackleton."

  In 2016, Sony Pictures announced it had secured the film rights for "Endurance."

  PBS and Time did a follow-up documentary on Scott Kelly called "Beyond A Year in Space", which examined Kelly's return to Earth and medical testing — as well as the paths of two newer astronauts, Jessica Meir and Victor Glover.

  "Two men with identical genomes, identical careers," Jeff Kluger, science editor for Time, said in an exclusive clip from the documentary provided to Space.com. "You send one man to space for one year … you track the other man living an earthly life for that same one year, subtract the differences — that's what space did."

  Kelly frequently comments on spaceflight in the media and is also involved in several charitable endeavors. In late 2017 and early 2018, his Twitter feed included links to an organization helping those hurt by Hurricane Harvey in Houston, as well as research by medical relief organization the Syrian American Medical Society. Kelly will also go to the Arctic in April 2018 with the International Space School Educational Trust, which has astronauts and other space advocates encouraging learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

• NASA - https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/kellysj.pdf

  1
  SCOTT J. KELLY (CAPTAIN, USN, RET.)NASA ASTRONAUTPronunciation:SKOTKEH-leeFollow Scotton TwitterFollow Scotton Instagram Follow Scotton Facebook PERSONAL DATA:Born February 21, 1964 in Orange, New Jersey. He has two children.EDUCATION:Graduated from Mountain High School, West Orange, New Jersey, in 1982; received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York Maritime College in 1987 and a Master of Science degree in Aviation Systems from the Universityof Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1996.ORGANIZATIONS:Associate Fellow, Society of Experimental Test Pilots;Member, Association of Space ExplorersSPECIAL HONORS:Two Defense Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy Achievement Medal, twoNavy Unit Commendations, National Defense Service Medal, Southwest Asia Service Medal, Kuwait Liberation Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, NASA Distinguished Service Medal, NASAExceptional Service Medal, NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, threeNASA Space Flight Medals, Russian Federation Medal for merit in Space Exploration. Korolev Diploma from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, 1999. Honorary Doctorate of Science degree from the State University of NewYork, 2008.EXPERIENCE:Kelly received his commission from the State University of New York Maritime College in May 1987 and was designated a naval aviator in July 1989 at Naval Air Station (NAS)inBeeville, Texas. He then reported to Fighter Squadron 101 at NAS Oceana, Virginia Beach, Virginia, for initial F-14 Tomcat training.Upon completion of this training, he was assigned to Fighter Squadron 143 and made overseas deployments to the North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and Persian Gulf aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69). Kelly was selected to attend the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in January 1993 and completed training in June 1994.After graduation, he worked as a test pilot at the Strike Aircraft Test Squadron, Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division, Patuxent River, Maryland, flying the F-14 Tomcat and F/A-18 Hornet. Kelly was the first pilot to fly an F-14 with an experimental digital flight control system installed and performed subsequent high angle of attack and departure testing. He has logged over8,000 hours in more than 40 different aircraft and spacecraft and has over 250 carrier landings. Kelly holds a United States Coast Guard Third Mate’s license.Kelly retired from the U.S. Navy inJune of2012.NASA EXPERIENCE:Selected by NASA in April 1996, Kelly reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. Following completion of training, he was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Spacecraft Systems/Operations branch. Kelly has logged more than 520 days in space on four space flight, and currently holds the record for time in orbit by a U.S. Astronaut.He served as Space Shuttle pilot on STS-103 in 1999 and was the Mission Commander on STS-118 in 2007. Following STS-103, Kelly served as NASA’s Director of Operations in Star City, Russia. He served as a backup crewmember for Interanation Space Station (ISS)Expedition5 and as the Astronaut Office Space Station Branch Chief. Kelly also served as a Flight Engineer for ISS Expedition 25andas the Commander of ISS Expedition 26. In March 2015, Kelly launched for a one-year mission to the ISS, serving as a Flight Engineer for increments 43 and 44, and Commander for increments 45 and 46.SPACEFLIGHT EXPERIENCE:STS-103 (December 19to December 27, 1999)was an 8-day mission,during which the crew successfully installed new instruments and upgraded systems on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Enhancing HST scientific capabilities required three spacewalks(EVAs). The STS-103 mission was accomplished in 120 Earth orbits, traveling 3.2 million miles in 191 hours and 11 minutes.National Aeronautics andSpace AdministrationFebruary2016Biographical DataLyndon B. Johnson Space CenterHouston, Texas 77058Click photo for downloadable high-res version
  STS-118 (August 8to August 21, 2007) was the 119th space shuttle flight, the 22nd flight to the ISS, and the 20th flight for Endeavour.During the mission, Endeavour’s crew successfully added another truss segment, a new gyroscope and an external spare parts platform to the ISS.A new system that enables docked shuttles to draw electrical power from the station to extend visits to the outpost was successfullyactivated.A total of four EVAs were performed by three crewmembers.Endeavour carried approximately5,000 pounds of equipment and supplies to the station and returned to Earth with approximately4,000 pounds of hardware and equipment.Traveling 5.3 million miles in space,the STS-118 mission was completed in 12 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes and 34 seconds.Kelly launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft on October 7, 2010 to serve a tour of duty on the ISS. He assumedcommand of Expedition 26 once the Soyuz TMA-19 undocked on November 24, 2010.After a 159 daystay aboard the ISS, Commander Kelly and Russian Flight Engineers Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka safely landed their Soyuz spacecraft on the KazakhstanSteppe on March 16, 2011.Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko launched in March 2015 for a year-long mission to the International Space Station. The mission’s goal is to understand how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space. During the 340-day mission, almost 400 experiments were conducted on the station. Data from the expedition will be used to reduce risks to the health of crewmembers as NASA prepares to advance space travel beyond low Earth orbit. Kelly was a Flight Engineer for increments 43 and 44, and the International Space Station Commander for increments 45 and 46. Kelly’s year in space included 5,440 orbits around the Earth and he conducted three spacewalks before returning home in March 2016.Scott Kelly retiredfrom NASA March 2016.

• National Geographic - https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/scott-kelly-astronaut-space-station-dna-health-science/

  No, Scott Kelly's Year in Space Didn't Mutate His DNA
  Scores of stories reporting that Kelly’s DNA is substantially different now are missing some basic facts about how biology works.

  Picture of Scott Kelly along with his brother, former Astronaut Mark Kelly
  Astronaut Scott Kelly (right) sits with his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly, at a media briefing in January 2015.
  PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT MARKOWITZ, NASA
  By Nadia Drake
  PUBLISHED MARCH 15, 2018

  If you believe recent news, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly went to space, spent a year there, and came back with substantial changes to his DNA. Some outlets are even reporting that a whopping seven percent of Kelly’s genes—segments of DNA that code for various proteins—are “abnormal” post-spaceflight.

  Unfortunately, even Kelly appears to be surprised by the news.

  “What? My DNA changed by 7%! Who knew? I just learned about it in this article. This could be good news! I no longer have to call [Mark Kelly] my identical twin brother anymore,” Scott Kelly tweeted.

  ONE STRANGE ROCK Hosted by Will Smith, ONE STRANGE ROCK is a mind-bending, thrilling journey exploring the fragility and wonder of our planet.
  Well, and we hate to spoil the fun, but no. The story Kelly is referring to, and many more, misrepresent the results of a study NASA commissioned on the effects of spaceflight by confusing changes in genetic sequence with changes in gene expression levels.

  That study, which involves multiple independent research groups, compared Scott with his twin brother Mark (also a NASA astronaut) and looked for changes caused while Scott spent a year aboard the International Space Station, a mission that ended in March 2016. Among the dimensions surveyed were cognitive ability, immune system function, and genetics.

  The space agency says that papers detailing the findings will be published later this year, and for now, the press is mostly relying on some vague wording and other information contained in a NASA release.

  “I, too, am concerned about how the stories coming out are being sensationalized,” says Colorado State University’s Susan Bailey, who leads one of the research groups studying the twins.

  THE SEVEN PERCENT
  So, no, seven percent of Kelly’s DNA is not mutated after his year in space, which makes sense if you keep in mind that humans and chimps have genetic sequences that differ by less than 2 percent, and individual humans—even completely unrelated strangers—differ by about 0.1 percent.

  Here’s how this works.

  Genetic sequences are like strings of letters arranged just so, and they are in charge of producing proteins. Mutate the wrong letter, or sequence of letters, and it can be mildly annoying, like our favorite ducking autocorrect, or it can be extremely bad news, like the mutations that allow tumors to proliferate. Most mutations, however, go unnoticed (the one that confer superpowers are a different story).

  Expression levels, on the other hand, reflect whether genes are turned on or turned off. Within each of us, most of our cells are otherwise genetically identical, but their genes are expressed at different levels. It’s those patterns of expression that produce hearts, brains, eyeballs, and other things, kind of like using the same set of ingredients to cook up vastly different dishes.

  WHAT DOES OUR PLANET LOOK LIKE ONCE YOU'VE SEEN IT FROM SPACE? - HERE'S WHAT SOME ASTRONAUTS HAVE TO SAY This animated time line, made of paper, covers some important milestones in space exploration, weaving in astronauts' thoughts about Earth.
  The NASA result everyone is freaking out about actually measured Scott Kelly’s expression levels, and it found that—not surprisingly—spaceflight affects how much expressing certain genes do, particularly those involved in immune function, DNA repair pathways, and bone growth.

  “Seven percent of the genes that changed their expression during spaceflight were still altered after six months back on Earth,” says Weill Cornell Medicine’s Christopher Mason, who led the analysis.

  That these levels of expression haven’t boomeranged to pre-spaceflight values is humongously different than saying Kelly’s DNA didn’t “return to normal after a sojourn in space.”

  “We had no idea what to expect, and this is the first experiment of its kind, so this sets the bar for future studies of astronauts,” Mason says. “Nonetheless, this number is likely within the range for humans under stress, such as climbing a mountain, or SCUBA diving.”

  Indeed, seeing such changes in expression is not at all unusual—it happens each time we get sick, or in response to environmental factors. Certainly, spending a year in microgravity with reduced oxygen and increased radiation levels could cause that type of change.

  MARK AND SCOTT ARE NOT IDENTICAL
  Another somewhat alarming-sounding finding is that Scott Kelly’s DNA “no longer matches that of his identical twin.”

  For anyone familiar with genetics, this is possibly the most obvious statement one could make. We humans accumulate random mutations throughout our genomes as we age, and the chances that Mark and Scott’s genetic sequences were randomly modified in exactly the same way are astronomically small. In reality, their DNA hasn’t been identical for most of their lives.

  That’s just at the most basic sequence level. All sorts of chemical modifications to DNA can dramatically affect where and how genes are expressed, and those markings—termed epigenetic—are malleable. Genomes add and erase those markings all the time, and they’re not the same between identical twins, either.

  Throw in a heaping pile of spaceflight, where exposure to higher levels of radiation necessarily mutates DNA more quickly, and the truly surprising result would be seeing no difference between Mark’s and Scott’s genetic sequences. The fact that they differ, and that Scott’s mutation rate is apparently a bit higher than Mark’s, is totally expected.

  “No twin pairs are ever completely identical, and we all do accrue random mutations all the time,” Bailey says. “No doubt, Scott did or does have different or more mutations than Mark—and anyone else not being in space for a year—due to radiation exposure alone.”

  CHROMOSOMAL BUNGEE CORDS
  All of that being said, one of the actually surprising findings from the NASA study is that Kelly’s chromosomes grew longer while he was in space, at least in his white blood cells. The changes occurred in what’s known as the telomere, a cap of genetic material that sits at the end of each chromosome.

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  Normally, telomeres shrink with age, the idea being that each time a chromosome is copied during cell division, the process chips away at that cap. Shortened or frayed telomeres are largely thought to be responsible for age-related cellular breakdown.

  But Kelly’s telomeres elongated in space … and then quickly shrank to their original lengths after he returned to Earth. That these structures exhibit such flexibility is intriguing and potentially quite consequential, says Bailey, whose lab studied Kelly’s telomeres.

  “We’re now trying to figure out why and what caused such shifts, so we can better appreciate potential health risks,” Bailey says, though she also notes that Scott Kelly’s exercise and nutrition on the station likely contributed to the chromosomal bungee.

  All this means that if Scott really wanted to no longer be genetically identical to Mark, he didn’t need to spend a year in space.

• Space - https://www.space.com/40007-astronauts-scott-mark-kelly-still-identical.html

  Astronaut Scott Kelly and His Twin Brother Are Still Identical, NASA Says
  By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | March 16, 2018 03:00pm ET
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  Astronaut Scott Kelly and His Twin Brother Are Still Identical, NASA Says
  Twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly pose at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Jan. 19, 2015, before Scott Kelly's nearly yearlong stay on the International Space Station.
  Credit: Robert Markowitz
  After a stream of erroneous media coverage about how spaceflight affects astronauts' genes, NASA issued an updated statement yesterday (March 15) about its "twins study" of former astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly.

  The study is following changes to Scott Kelly's body after he spent nearly a year in space between 2015 and 2016. His brother and identical twin Mark remained on Earth during that time and is the control subject for the study. In late January, NASA issued an update to its 2017 results that confirmed most of the initial findings.

  "Mark and Scott Kelly are still identical twins; Scott's DNA did not fundamentally change. What researchers did observe are changes in gene expression, which is how your body reacts to your environment. This likely is within the range for humans under stress, such as mountain climbing or scuba diving," NASA said in the recent clarification to the Jan. 31 update. [Twins In Space: Astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly in Photos]

  NASA's update came after some media outlets initially misreported that Scott Kelly's DNA itself had changed.

  "The change related to only 7 percent of the gene expression that changed during spaceflight that had not returned to preflight [levels] after six months on Earth," NASA officials wrote. "This change of gene expression is very minimal. We are at the beginning of our understanding of how spaceflight affects the molecular level of the human body. NASA and the other researchers collaborating on these studies expect to announce more comprehensive results on the twins studies this summer."

  The brothers joked about the media coverage on their Twitter accounts.

  "What? My DNA changed by 7%! Who knew? I just learned about it in this article," wrote Scott Kelly, who linked to a Newsweek article in a tweet on March 10. "This could be good news! I no longer have to call @ShuttleCDRKelly my identical twin brother anymore."

  Mark Kelly added his input yesterday (March 15) while linking to a CNN article. "I used to have an identical twin brother. Then this happened," he joked. After he tweeted, the CNN article was updated.

  Scott Kelly
  ✔
  @StationCDRKelly
  What? My DNA changed by 7%! Who knew? I just learned about it in this article. This could be good news! I no longer have to call @ShuttleCDRKelly my identical twin brother anymore. http://www.newsweek.com/scott-kelly-astronauts-nasa-dna-838535 …

  6:47 PM - Mar 10, 2018

  A year in space altered this man's DNA
  Seven percent of Scott Kelly's genes did not return to normal when he got home.

  newsweek.com
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  Several reporters also wrote articles pointing out the erroneous information spread by other news outlets.

  "The NASA result everyone is freaking out about actually measured Scott Kelly's expression levels, and it found that — not surprisingly — spaceflight affects how much expressing certain genes do, particularly those involved in immune function, DNA repair pathways, and bone growth," Nadia Drake wrote in National Geographic.

  "Kelly's base DNA didn't actually change by seven percent during his time in space. His gene expression — the transcribing and translation of genes, not the genes themselves — was what actually changed during his year on the space station," added Miriam Kramer in Mashable.

  Mark Kelly
  ✔
  @ShuttleCDRKelly
  I used to have an identical twin brother. Then this happened.... https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/03/14/health/scott-kelly-dna-nasa-twins-study/index.html …

  8:04 AM - Mar 15, 2018

  Astronaut's genetic expression changed by time in space
  Preliminary findings from NASA indicate that 7% of Scott Kelly's genetic expression did not return to normal once he was back on Earth.

  amp.cnn.com
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  Ars Technica's John Timmer's roundup of coverage pointed out errors in several articles, including in a now-corrected story by Space.com's sister site Live Science. For that story, he pointed out problems not only with the description of DNA altering but with a phrase saying Kelly's genetic code had changed. Timmer said changing a person's genetic code would actually kill them. (Live Science posted a follow-up piece today.)

  Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Sydney Morning Herald - https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/astronaut-scott-kelly-on-the-devastating-effects-of-a-year-in-space-20170922-gyn9iw.html

  Astronaut Scott Kelly on the devastating effects of a year in space
  NASA astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year in space. His recollections of this unprecedented test of human endurance, and the physical toll it took, raise questions about the likelihood of future travel to Mars.
  By Scott Kelly 6 October 2017 — 11:52am
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  I'm sitting at the head of my dining room table at home in Houston, Texas, finishing dinner with my family: my longtime girlfriend Amiko, my twin brother Mark, his wife, former US congresswoman Gabby Giffords, his daughter Claudia, our father Richie and my daughters Samantha and Charlotte. It's a simple thing, sit ting at a table and eating a meal with those you love, and many people do it every day without giving it much thought. For me, it's something I've been dreaming of for almost a year.
  I contemplated what it would be like to eat this meal so many times. Now that I'm finally here, it doesn't seem entirely real. The faces of the people I love that I haven't seen for so long, the chatter of many people talking together, the clink of silverware, the swish of wine in a glass – these are all unfamiliar. Even the sensation of gravity holding me in my chair feels strange, and every time I put a glass or fork down on the table there's a part of my mind that is looking for a dot of Velcro or a strip of duct tape to hold it in place.
  Pause
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  Fullscreen
  The International Space Station is as far as humans go in space these days, but it is at just the right distance to capture astonishing images of Earth.

  It's March 2016, and I've been back on Earth, after a year in space, for precisely 48 hours. I push back from the table and struggle to stand up, feeling like a very old man getting out of a recliner.
  "Stick a fork in me, I'm done," I announce. Everyone laughs and encourages me to get some rest. I start the journey to my bedroom: about 20 steps from the chair to the bed. On the third step, the floor seems to lurch under me, and I stumble into a planter. Of course, it isn't the floor – it's my vestibular system trying to read just to Earth's gravity. I'm getting used to walking again.
  Scott Kelly inside a Soyuz simulator ahead of his mission. This capsule would be his escape pod in case of a disaster.
  Scott Kelly inside a Soyuz simulator ahead of his mission. This capsule would be his escape pod in case of a disaster.

  Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls/Courtesy of Penguin Random House
  "That's the first time I've seen you stumble," Mark says. "You're doing pretty good." A former astronaut, Mark knows from personal experience what it's like to come back to Earth. As I walk by Samantha, I put my hand on her shoulder and she smiles up at me.
  I make it to my bedroom without incident and close the door behind me. Every part of my body hurts. All my joints and all of my muscles are protesting the crushing pressure of gravity. I'm also nauseated, though I haven't thrown up. I strip off my clothes and get into bed, relishing the feeling of sheets, the light pressure of the blanket over me, the fluff of the pillow under my head.
  All these are things I've missed dearly for the past year. I can hear the happy chatter of my family behind the door, voices I haven't heard for a long time without the distortion of phones bouncing signals off satellites. I drift off to sleep to the comforting sound of their talking and laughing.
  A crack of light wakes me: Is it morning? No, it's just Amiko coming to bed. I've only been asleep for a couple of hours but I feel delirious. It's a struggle to come to consciousness enough to move, to tell her how awful I feel. I'm seriously nauseated now, feverish, and my pain has gotten worse. This isn't like how I felt after my last mission. This is much, much worse.
  Scott Kelly and partner Amiko in Red Square, Moscow.
  Scott Kelly and partner Amiko in Red Square, Moscow.

  Photo: Courtesy of Penguin Random House Australia
  "Amiko," I finally manage to say. She is alarmed by the sound of my voice.
  "What is it?" Her hand is on my arm, then on my forehead.
  Twin future astronauts Mark (left) and Scott Kelly, in 1967.
  Twin future astronauts Mark (left) and Scott Kelly, in 1967.

  Photo: Courtesy of Penguin Random House Australia
  Her skin feels chilled, but it's just that I'm so hot. "I don't feel good," I say.
  Over the past year, I've spent 340 days alongside Russian astronaut Mikhail "Misha" Kornienko on the International Space Station (ISS). As part of NASA's planned journey to Mars, we're members of a program designed to discover what effect such long-term time in space has on human beings. This was my fourth trip to space, and by the end of the mission I'd spent 520 days up there, more than any other NASA astronaut. Amiko has gone through the whole process with me as my main support once before, when I spent 159 days on the ISS in 2010-11. I had a reaction to coming back from space that time, but it was nothing like this.
  The International Space Station, where Scott Kelly spent 340 consecutive days.
  The International Space Station, where Scott Kelly spent 340 consecutive days.

  Photo: Courtesy of Penguin Random House Australia
  This exposure would increase my risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of my life.

  I struggle to get up. Find the edge of the bed. Feet down. Sit up. Stand up. At every stage I feel like I'm fighting through quicksand. When I'm finally vertical, the pain in my legs is awful, and on top of that pain I feel a sensation that's even more alarming: it feels as though all the blood in my body is rushing to my legs, like the sensation of the blood rushing to your head when you do a handstand, but in reverse.
  I can feel the tissue in my legs swelling. I shuffle my way to the bath room, moving my weight from one foot to the other with deliberate effort. Left. Right. Left. Right. I make it to the bathroom, flip on the light, and look down at my legs. They are swollen and alien stumps, not legs at all. "Oh shit," I say. "Amiko, come look at this." She kneels down and squeezes one ankle, and it squishes like a water balloon. She looks up at me with worried eyes. "I can't even feel your ankle bones," she says.
  "My skin is burning, too," I tell her. Amiko frantically examines me. I have a strange rash all over my back, the backs of my legs, the back of my head and neck – everywhere I was in contact with the bed. I can feel her cool hands moving over my inflamed skin. "It looks like an allergic rash," she says. "Like hives."
  I use the bathroom and shuffle back to bed, wondering what I should do. Normally if I woke up feeling like this, I would go to the emergency room. But no one at the hospital will have seen symptoms of having been in space for a year. I crawl back into bed, trying to find a way to lie down without touching my rash.
  I can hear Amiko rummaging in the medicine cabinet. She returns with two ibuprofen and a glass of water. As she settles down, I can tell from her every movement, every breath, that she is worried about me. We both knew the risks of the mission I signed on for. After six years together, I can understand her perfectly, even in the wordless dark.
  As I try to will myself to sleep, I wonder whether my friend Misha, by now back in Moscow, is also suffering from swollen legs and painful rashes. I suspect so. This is why we volunteered for this mission, after all: to discover more about how the human body is affected by long-term space flight. Scientists will study the data on Misha and my 53-year-old self for the rest of our lives and beyond. Our space agencies won't be able to push out farther into space, to a destination like Mars, until we can learn more about how to strengthen the weakest links in the chain that make space flight possible: the human body and mind.
  People often ask me why I volunteered for this mission, knowing the risks: the risk of launch, the risk inherent in space walks, the risk of returning to Earth, the risks I would be exposed to every moment I lived in a metal container orbiting the Earth at 28,100 kilometres an hour. I have a few answers I give to this question, but none of them feels fully satisfying to me. None of them quite answers it.
  Scott Kelly (at left) undertaking a dangerous space walk outside the International Space Station.
  Scott Kelly (at left) undertaking a dangerous space walk outside the International Space Station.

  Photo: Courtesy of Penguin Random House Australia
  A normal mission to the International Space Station lasts five to six months, so scientists have a good deal of data about what happens to the human body in space for that length of time. But very little is known about what occurs after month six. The symptoms may get precipitously worse in the ninth month, for instance, or they may level off. We don't know, and there is only one way to find out.
  During our mission, Misha and I collected various types of data for studies on our selves, which took a significant amount of our time. Because Mark and I were identical twins, I also took part in an extensive study comparing the two of us throughout the year, down to the genetic level. The ISS was a world-class orbiting laboratory, and in addition to the human studies of which I was one of the main subjects, I also spent a lot of my time during the year working on other experiments, like fluid physics, botany, combustion and Earth observation.
  When I talked about the ISS to audiences, I always shared with them the importance of the science being done there. But to me, it was just as important that the station was serving as a foothold for our species in space. From here, we could learn more about how to push out further into the cosmos. The costs were high, as were the risks.
  On my previous flight to the space station, a mission of 159 days, I lost bone mass, my muscles atrophied, and my blood redistributed itself in my body, which strained and shrank the walls of my heart. More troubling, I experienced problems with my vision, as many other astronauts had. I had been exposed to more than 30 times the radiation of a person on Earth, equivalent to about 10 chest X-rays every day. This exposure would increase my risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of my life.
  None of this compared, though, to the most troubling risk: that something bad could happen to someone I love while I was in space with no way for me to come home.
  I had been on the station for a week, and was getting better at knowing where I was when I first woke up. If I had a headache, I knew it was because I had drifted too far from the vent blowing clean air at my face. I was often still disoriented about how my body was positioned: I would wake up convinced that I was upside down, because in the dark and without gravity, my inner ear took a random guess as to how my body was positioned in the small space. When I turned on a light, I had a sort of visual illusion that the room was rotating rapidly as it reoriented itself around me, though I knew it was actually my brain readjusting in response to new sensory input.
  The light in my crew quarters took a minute to warm up to full brightness. The space was just barely big enough for me and my sleeping bag, two laptops, some clothes, toiletries, photos of Amiko and my daughters, a few paperback books. I looked at my schedule for today. I clicked through new emails, stretched and yawned, then fished around in my toiletries bag, attached to the wall down by my left knee, for my toothpaste and toothbrush. I brushed, still in my sleeping bag, then swallowed the toothpaste and chased it with a sip of water out of a bag with a straw. There wasn't really a good way to spit in space.
  I didn't get to spend time outside the station until my first of two planned space walks, which was almost seven months in. This was one of the things that some people found difficult to imagine about living on the space station, the fact that I couldn't step outside when I felt like it. Putting on a spacesuit and leaving the station for a space walk was an hours-long process that required the full attention of at least three people on station and dozens more on the ground.
  Space walks were the most dangerous thing we did in orbit. Even if the station was on fire, even if it was filling up with poison gas, even if a meteoroid had crashed through a module and outer space was rushing in, the only way to escape the station was in a Soyuz capsule, which also needed preparation and planning to depart safely. We practised dealing with emergency scenarios regularly, and in many of these drills we raced to prepare the Soyuz as quickly as we could. No one had ever had to use the Soyuz as a lifeboat, and no one hoped to.
  I opened a food container attached to the wall and fished out a pouch of dehydrated coffee with cream and sugar. I floated over to the hot-water dispenser in the ceiling of the lab, which worked by insert ing a needle into a nozzle on the bag. When the bag was full, I replaced the needle with a drinking straw – this way the liquid didn't escape into the module. It had been oddly unsatisfying at first to drink coffee from a plastic bag sipped through a straw, but now I wasn't bothered by it.
  I flipped through the breakfast options, looking for a packet of the granola I liked. Unfortunately, everyone else seemed to like it, too. I chose some dehydrated eggs instead and reconstituted them with the same hot water dispenser, then warmed up some irradiated sausage links in the food warmer box, which looked a lot like a metal briefcase. I cut the bag open, then, since we had no sink, cleaned the scissors by licking them (we each had our own scissors). I spooned the eggs out of the bag onto a tortilla – conveniently, surface tension held them in place – added the sausage and some hot sauce, rolled it up, and ate the burrito while catch ing up with the morning's news on CNN.
  All the while I was holding myself in place with my right big toe tucked ever so slightly under a handrail on the floor. Handrails were placed on the walls, floors and ceilings of every module and at the hatches where modules connected, allowing us to propel ourselves through the modules or to stay in place rather than drifting away. There were a lot of things about living in weightlessness that were fun, but eating was not one of them. I missed being able to sit in a chair while eating a meal, relaxing and pausing to connect with other people.
  "I missed being able to sit in a chair while eating a meal, relaxing and pausing to connect with other people," writes Kelly of life on the ISS.
  "I missed being able to sit in a chair while eating a meal, relaxing and pausing to connect with other people," writes Kelly of life on the ISS.

  Photo: Marco Grob
  More than 400 experiments took place on ISS during this expedition. NASA scientists talked about the research falling into two major categories. The first had to do with studies that might benefit life on Earth. These included research on the properties of chemicals that could be used in new drugs, combustion studies that were unlocking new ways to get more efficiency out of the fuel we burnt, and the development of new materials. The second large category had to do with solving problems for future space exploration: testing new life-support equipment, solving technical problems of spaceflight and studying new ways of handling the demands of the human body in space.
  Science took up about a third of my time, human studies about three-quarters of that. I had to take blood samples from myself and my crew mates for analysis back on Earth, and I kept a log of everything, from what I ate to my moods. I tested my reaction skills at various points throughout the day. I took ultrasounds of blood vessels, my heart, my eyes and my muscles. I also took part in an experiment called Fluid Shifts, using a device that sucked the blood down to the lower half of my body, where gravity normally kept it. This tested a leading theory about why space flight caused damage to some astronauts' vision.
  In fact, there was much crossover between these categories of research. If we could learn how to counteract the devastating impact of bone loss in microgravity, the solutions could well be applied to osteoporosis and other bone diseases. If we could learn how to keep our hearts healthy in space, that knowledge could be useful on Earth.
  The effects of living in space looked a lot like the effects of ageing, which affected us all. The lettuce we grew was a study for future space travel – astronauts on their way to Mars will have no fresh food but what they can grow – but it also taught us more about growing food efficiently on Earth. The ISS's closed water system, where we processed our urine into clean water, will be crucial for getting to Mars, but it also has promising implications for treating water on Earth – especially in places where clean water was scarce.
  I tell my flight surgeon, Steve, that I feel well enough to get right to work immediately upon returning from space, and I do, but within a few days I feel much worse. This is what it means to have allowed my body to be used for science. I will be a test subject for the rest of my life. A few months after arriving back on Earth, though, I feel distinctly better. I've been travelling the country and the world talking about my experiences in space. It's gratifying to see how curious people are about my mission, how much children instinctively feel the excitement and wonder of space flight, and how many people think, as I do, that Mars is the next step.
  I also know that if we want to go to Mars, it will be very, very difficult, it will cost a great deal of money and it may likely cost human lives. But I know now that if we decide to do it, we can.
  Edited extract from Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly (Doubleday, $35), published on October 19.

My Journey to the Stars
Andrew Medlar
Booklist.
114.2 (Sept. 15, 2017): p47.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
My Journey to the Stars.
By Scott Kelly. Illus. by Andre Ceolin.
Oct. 2017. 48p. Crown, $17.99 (9781524763770). 629.450092. K-Gr. 2.
American astronaut Kelly shares this picture-book overview of his life simultaneously with the adult
memoir Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery. Here he tells about growing up a poor
student with his quarreling parents and his twin brother (now also an astronaut), and how, after being
inspired by a book, he chose to spend time in the navy, on space shuttles, and his recent year aboard the
International Space Station--"the hardest thing I've ever done." The first-person voice is accessible,
enthusiastic, and encouraging, if sometimes pat, and the short sentences are set upon colorful, full-bleed
illustrations by Brazilian artist Ceolin, often accompanied by color photographs from the real-life
experiences. While there are some unnecessary gaps of helpful information, and the opportunity for
captions, back matter, and further exploration has been lost in space, Kelly's story is an inspiration for
adventure, fodder for space fascination, and a call to work hard and follow one's dreams.--Andrew Medlar
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Medlar, Andrew. "My Journey to the Stars." Booklist, 15 Sept. 2017, p. 47. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A507359940/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6a41690c.
Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A507359940
4/22/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1524441866067 2/7
Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of
Discovery
David Pitt
Booklist.
114.1 (Sept. 1, 2017): p20.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery. By Scott Kelly. Oct. 2017.368p. illus. Knopf,
$29.95 (9781524731595). 629.450092.
It's no minor point that astronaut Scott Kelly chose as his book's title the name of the ship Ernest Shackleton
used for his expedition to cross the Antarctic almost exactly a century before Kelly climbed aboard the
International Space Station, which he would call home for the next year. Like Shackleton, Kelly was
proposing to do what no one had ever done before, and, like Shackleton, he had no idea what challenges
were in store for him, both during his extended stay in space and back home on Earth. He tells his story in
chapters that alternate between his life before the year in space (a born risk-taker, he was a poor student
until he read Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and discovered what he was meant to do with his life) and his life
aboard the ISS. For space junkies, it's absolutely required reading. The narrative vividly captures Kelly's
growing excitement and trepidation as he prepares to spend a year living in an environment where the
potential for catastrophe or death is a part of daily life, and once he's aboard the space station, we feel as
though we're right there with him. A great book.--David Pitt
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Pitt, David. "Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2017, p. 20. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509161455/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=331db297. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509161455
4/22/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Kelly, Scott: ENDURANCE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Kelly, Scott ENDURANCE Knopf (Adult Nonfiction) $29.95 10, 17 ISBN: 978-1-5247-3159-5
A four-time veteran of off-planet missions, including a year aboard the International Space Station, offers a
view of astronautics that is at once compelling and cautionary.Why go into space in the first place? Kelly
ponders that existential question early on, the whys and wherefores of entering into the strangest of strange
environments and potentially suffering all manner of consequences. He replies, "I have a few answers I give
to this question, but none of them feels fully satisfying to me." Among those answers, perhaps, are because
it's extremely exciting to go where no one--very few people, anyway--has gone before, and after all, Kelly
still holds the American record for consecutive days spent in outer space. Naturally, that comes at a cost; his
book opens with an alarming portrait of edema, rashes, and malaise, and hence another answer emerges: we
can't go to, say, Mars without understanding what space flight does to a human body. Some of Kelly's
descriptions seem a little by-the-numbers, the equivalent of a ball player's thanking the deity for a win--a
spacegoing colleague is "sincere and enthusiastic without ever seeming fake or calculating," while a
Russian counterpart is "a quiet and thoughtful person, consistently reliable." Nonetheless, Kelly's book
shines in its depiction of the day-to-day work of astronautics and more particularly where that work
involves international cooperation. On that score, there's no better account of the cultural differences
between Right Stuff-inculcated NASA types and Yuri Gagarin-inspired cosmonauts: "One difference
between the Russian approach to spacewalking and ours," he writes, "is that the Russians stop working
when it's dark." It's fascinating stuff, a tale of aches and pains, of boredom punctuated by terror and worries
about what's happening in the dark and back down on Earth. A worthy read for space buffs, to say nothing
of anyone contemplating a voyage to the stars.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Kelly, Scott: ENDURANCE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500364988/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a7722661.
Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A
4/22/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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My Journey to the Stars
Publishers Weekly.
264.33 (Aug. 14, 2017): p83.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
My Journey to the Stars
Scott Kelly, illus. by Andre Ceolin. Crown, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-5247-6377-0
Releasing simultaneously with NASA astronaut Kelly's adult memoir, Endurance, this picture book offers a
condensed portrait of his life. It opens with Kelly's 2016 departure from the International Space Station,
where he spent a record-breaking 340 days. Noting that his identical twin and fellow astronaut Mark Kelly
"is waiting for me back on Earth," Kelly backtracks to their childhood, when they "always had a talent for
finding trouble and taking risks." Their parents' fighting turned the twins into peacemakers, whose ability to
stay calm in tough times served them well ("You never know when your problems can become your
strengths"). Family snapshots and NASA photographs track Kelly's career as a Navy fighter pilot and
astronaut. Ceolin's, soft, nostalgic illustrations are used mainly in the retrospective portions of the book;
photographs dominate the pages after Kelly's NASA career gets underway. The result is a bit of a visual
hodgepodge, but Kelly's account firmly underscores the rewards of dedication to one's dreams. Ages 5-8.
Author's agent: Ely se Cheney, Ely se Cheney Agency. Illustrator's agent: Mela Bolinao, MB Artists. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"My Journey to the Stars." Publishers Weekly, 14 Aug. 2017, p. 83. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501717221/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5fb3bbaa.
Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501717221
4/22/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Kelly, Scott: MY JOURNEY TO THE
STARS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Kelly, Scott MY JOURNEY TO THE STARS Crown (Children's Informational) $17.99 10, 17 ISBN: 978-
1-5247-6377-0
An astronaut's story, from early adventures with his twin brother (who also became an astronaut) to recordbreaking
feats in space.Though in most respects typical of astronaut profiles for younger readers, this one
features unusually personal notes--a nod to his "girlfriend," Amiko, and early childhood memories of hiding
in the bedroom with his brother when their parents fought--and also vivid writing. Kelly describes re-entry
as "like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel--but while you're on fire!" In a personable voice he highlights
major youthful experiences, then goes on to give quicker accounts of his training and career, which began
with a life-changing reading of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff (1979) and culminated in four missions capped
by a year spent in orbit to track long-term physical changes, with his brother back on Earth serving as
control. (Kelly will doubtless cover all of this in greater detail in his memoir for adult readers, scheduled for
publication at the same time.) In an ill-judged attempt to fill in gaps, the illustrations, most of which are a
mix of family snapshots and official NASA photos, alternate with or are superimposed on very simply
drawn cartoon portraits or frames. The Kelly family is white; some astronauts and other figures in both the
photos and in Ceolin's scenes are dark-skinned. The pictures are a patchwork, but the authorial voice is
distinct and the story has its unique aspects. (Picture book/autobiography. 7-9)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Kelly, Scott: MY JOURNEY TO THE STARS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499572772/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=33793379.
Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499572772
4/22/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Endurance: A Yearin Space, A Lifetime of
Discovery
Scott Kelly
Library Journal.
142.11 (June 15, 2017): p17a.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
A stunning memoir from the astronaut who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space
Station--a candid account of his remarkable voyage, of the journeys off the planet that preceded it, and of
his colorful formative years.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
978-1-5247-3159-5 | $29.95 |750,000 Knopf | HC | October
978-0-7352-3371-3 | $34.00C | Viking Canada
* 978-1-5247-3160-1 | * AD: 978-1-5247-3420-6 | * CD: 978-1-5247-3419-0
MEMOIR/SPACE
Social: @StationCDRKelly; Facebook.com/CDRKelly; ScottKelly.com RI: Author lives in Webster, TX
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Kelly, Scott. "Endurance: A Yearin Space, A Lifetime of Discovery." Library Journal, 15 June 2017, p. 17a.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495668262/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=739df752. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495668262
4/22/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Kelly, Scott. My Journey to the Stars
Kathleen Isaacs
School Library Journal.
63.10 (Oct. 2017): p124.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
KELLY, Scott. My Journey to the Stars. illus. by Andre Ceolin. 48p. photos. Crown. Oct. 2017. Tr $17.99.
ISBN 9781524763770. POP
K-Gr 2--Astronaut Kelly recalls the early experiences that led up to his joyful return to Earth in March
2016, after spending nearly a year in space. This picture book biography introduces the wiggly, unfocused
student who, with his twin brother Mark, enjoyed risk-taking adventure and learned to stay calm in the face
of parental storms. It was Tom Wolfe's biography of the Mercury Seven, The Right Stuff that inspired Kelly
to become an astronaut. Both brothers joined NASA in 1996 and flew into space four times--separately, "in
case something went wrong." Kelly's long sojourn in the International Space Station (ISS) offered a unique
scientific opportunity because Mark remained on Earth as a comparison. The first-person narrative is
immediate and relatively simple. It opens with the astronaut entering the tiny space ship that will take him
back to Earth, flashes back through childhood and training, and ends with a happy splash in his home
swimming pool. Photographs from the Kellys' childhood as well as Scott's time in the ISS are reproduced
on appropriate backgrounds. Their realism makes an interesting contrast with Ceolin's smooth digital
illustrations and almost featureless figures. Timed to appear alongside his adult memoir, Endurance: A Year
in Space, this story of his preparation and his experience has well-chosen details and just the right amount
of information for his intended audience. VERDICT Pair with Carmella van Vleet's To the Stars!: The First
American Woman To Walk in Space to inspire a new generation of space travelers.--Kathleen Isaacs,
Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Isaacs, Kathleen. "Kelly, Scott. My Journey to the Stars." School Library Journal, Oct. 2017, p. 124.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A507950877/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=18f0f647. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A507950877
Relive 'A Year in Space' with astronaut Scott Kelly
Don Oldenburg
USA Today. (Oct. 18, 2017): Lifestyle: p02D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Don Oldenburg, Special for USA TODAY

In his new book, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery (Knopf, 400 pp., *** out of four), Scott Kelly chronicles his life and his record-setting 340 days in space in 2015-16 aboard the International Space Station.

In a moment telling of the man, Kelly writes: "Climbing into a rocket that may kill me is both a confrontation of mortality and an adventure that makes me feel more alive than anything else I've ever experienced in life."

A self-professed risk junkie since childhood, Kelly lives for the kind of adrenaline rush blasting off into space provides. So much so that this former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and test pilot has done it four times.

Kelly's sense of adventure thrives on achieving what no others have done. His rocket-fueled bucket list includes Mars, and the 520 total days he has spent in space so far are about what it would take to land him on the Red Planet.

The turning point in Kelly's life came when, as a directionless college student, he read Tom Wolfe's NASA classic, The Right Stuff. It was a game changer for a blue-collar Jersey kid, the twin son of an alcoholic cop and resilient mother, and set him on the improbable path to outer space. From space, Kelly even placed a long-distance call to Wolfe to thank him.

Kelly's space account begins at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center outside of Moscow, where all the logistics, routines and rituals take place for him and his cosmonaut colleagues. From there, he alternates chapters, shuffling his personal history with the year-in-space story.

As Kelly found out, spending that long in a metal container orbiting the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour is dizzying. Part of his mission was to reveal those mental and physical risks.

He begins the book with a family dinner at his Houston home 24 hours after returning from 340 days in space. Gravity weighing him down feels wrong. He takes three steps and stumbles. Every joint in his body hurts. He's delirious, nauseated and feverish. His legs and ankles swell like water balloons. A rash all over his back feels on fire.

Kelly passes along light-years of fascinating trivia, such as that eating dill prevents in-space flatulence and that the smell of space is like sparklers on the Fourth of July. Some of the details only space nerds could love, from the space-travel procedurals and technicalities to the rigorous scientific tests and the logs tracking everything he ate and his every mood.

All challenges don't take place up there: Kelly writes of the effects on his marriage and family. His sister-in-law, then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords -- who is married to his identical twin brother, astronaut Mark Kelly -- was shot in an assassination attempt while Scott Kelly circled about 250 miles above the Earth.

Kelly's account is insightful, at times humorous, heart-tugging at others. And it's inspiring enough to change the life of some lost kid, just like The Right Stuff did for him.

CAPTION(S):

photo Scott Kelly via AP

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Oldenburg, Don. "Relive 'A Year in Space' with astronaut Scott Kelly." USA Today, 18 Oct. 2017, p. 02D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A510377778/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=84614896. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A510377778
Book World: A year in orbit: Beautiful views and burned-out light bulbs
Marcia Bartusiak
The Washington Post. (Nov. 3, 2017): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Marcia Bartusiak

Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery

By Scott Kelly

Knopf. 387 pp. $29.95

---

For many of us, the childhood fantasy never went away. We grew up glued to our grainy black-and-white TVs, watching with awe as Alan Shepard and John Glenn rocketed into space in blazing glory. It was easy to imagine that, someday in the future, we'd have the same chance to be free from the confines of gravity. Few have gotten that opportunity, but "Endurance," astronaut Scott Kelly's memoir (written with Margaret Lazarus Dean) of his record-setting year on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015, offers Earthlings an informative and gripping look at both the adventures and day-by-day experiences of living in a metal container that is orbiting Earth at 17,500 mph.

Yet at the same time, Kelly brings our dreams crashing down to Earth, vividly reminding us of the many challenges - some mundane, others quite scary - of that cosmic frontier. It's not all beautiful views of our planet and restful floats in zero-g. There's the burned-out lightbulbs, the mold and dust, the never-ending hum of equipment, the occasional flashes in your vision when a cosmic ray passes through your eyes, the lost bone mass, and the build-up of carbon dioxide when the scrubbers sporadically malfunction. "If we are going to get to Mars," Kelly writes, "we are going to need a much better way to deal with CO2. Using our current finicky system, a Mars crew would be in significant danger," and if "the toilet broke and we couldn't fix it, we would be dead." He and his colleague, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, were human guinea pigs, hoping to learn the long-term effects of space isolation on mind and body.

Given Kelly's history growing up, the book's biggest surprise is that he even made it into space. A terrible student, he was more interested in partying and hurtling down a hill on a bike than sitting quietly in a classroom. Graduating from a New Jersey high school in the bottom half of his class, he was about to flunk out of college - until he came upon Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" in the campus bookstore. He was immediately drawn to the book's "young hotshots catapulting off aircraft carriers, testing unstable airplanes, drinking hard, and generally moving through the world like badasses." Almost overnight, he knew he wanted to join them. Inspired, he gradually learned how to focus on his courses, changed to a military-oriented school and told his new roommate that he was going to be an astronaut. His friend replied, "Well, I'm going to be an Indian chief."

But Kelly proved all such doubters wrong. Within years, he was flying off aircraft carriers as a naval aviator (some of the most exhilarating sections of the book) and then became a test pilot. He at last filled out his NASA application in 1995 and was accepted into the largest astronaut class in NASA's history: 44 in all, including his twin brother, Mark. Within four years, Kelly was in space, aboard the space shuttle Discovery sent out to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. He compared his training for that moment to "getting a Ph.D."

Piloting the space shuttle had been Kelly's sole ambition. "I didn't want to get that space station stink on me ... resulting in fewer shuttle flights." But when asked, he served. He reluctantly agreed to stay on the station for six months in 2010-11, by then rocketing up on a Russian Soyuz after the shuttles were decommissioned. That experience made him especially qualified for a repeat performance, but this time for an entire year, with his personal quarters on the station no bigger than an old-fashioned phone booth.

"Endurance" is filled with minutiae on the ISS' modules and equipment, which space aficionados will probably lap up, yet it remains a fascinating read. Upon opening the Soyuz hatch to enter the ISS, for example, Kelly senses something familiar: "A strong burned metal smell, like the smell of sparklers on the Fourth of July. Objects that have been exposed to the vacuum of space have this unique smell on them, like the smell of welding - the smell of space."

His language is earnest and straightforward, just the style one expects from an astronaut. At the same time he frankly reflects on how his career upended his family and marriage. And then there is the boisterous camaraderie with his colleagues and stationmates, not to mention the astronaut rituals. Because the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to journey into space, in 1961, peed on the right rear tire of his launchpad bus before entering his capsule, every astronaut and cosmonaut launching from Russia has done the same for good luck ever since (women bring a bottle of urine to splash on the tire).

The year does not go quickly for Kelly. Thirteen other astronauts and cosmonauts would come and go as he and Kornienko stayed put, each dealing with separate duties in their respective Russian and U.S. modules. Kelly completed a few spacewalks for repairs (which are far more arduous than the traditional publicity suggests), dissected rodents to study the effects of spaceflight on mammal physiology and took a stab at playing botanist Mark Watney in the movie "The Martian." He grew lettuce and zinnias, to test whether fresh food would be possible for Mars travelers. In this endeavor he learned that there is also an emotional need for such spaceborne farming, confessing that he had "been missing the beauty and fragility of living things" over his sequestered year.

What no one misses are the inherent dangers. During his year in space, three non-manned supply ships exploded after launch, forcing the station inhabitants to ration for a while. More horrific is the space junk, the myriad debris and old satellites that buzz around the Earth at thousands of miles per hour. Most are tracked, and the ISS' engines are fired up routinely to move the station out of the way. But sometimes a new bit of junk is sighted with too little time for such a maneuver, which happened during Kelly's year on the ISS. All aboard took shelter in the Soyuz capsule for 10 excruciating minutes. "I realize that if the satellite had in fact hit us," Kelly writes, "we probably wouldn't even have known it. ... [We] would have gone from grumbling to one another in our cold Soyuz to being blasted in a million directions as diffused atoms, all in the space of a millisecond."

But every astronaut and cosmonaut willingly accepts such challenges for a reason: to secure the future of spaceflight. "It will be very, very difficult, it will cost a great deal of money, and it may cost human lives," stresses Kelly. "But I know now that if we decide to do it, we can."

Just make sure European Space Agency astronauts are included in that first trip to Mars. According to Kelly, they bring the best food.

---

Bartusiak is a professor in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing. She is the author of six books on the frontiers of astrophysics and its history, including "Black Hole" and "Einstein's Unfinished Symphony."

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bartusiak, Marcia. "Book World: A year in orbit: Beautiful views and burned-out light bulbs." Washington Post, 3 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A513118920/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9538b823. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A513118920

Medlar, Andrew. "My Journey to the Stars." Booklist, 15 Sept. 2017, p. 47. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A507359940/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. Pitt, David. "Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2017, p. 20. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509161455/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. "Kelly, Scott: ENDURANCE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500364988/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. "My Journey to the Stars." Publishers Weekly, 14 Aug. 2017, p. 83. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501717221/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. "Kelly, Scott: MY JOURNEY TO THE STARS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499572772/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. Kelly, Scott. "Endurance: A Yearin Space, A Lifetime of Discovery." Library Journal, 15 June 2017, p. 17a. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495668262/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. Isaacs, Kathleen. "Kelly, Scott. My Journey to the Stars." School Library Journal, Oct. 2017, p. 124. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A507950877/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. Oldenburg, Don. "Relive 'A Year in Space' with astronaut Scott Kelly." USA Today, 18 Oct. 2017, p. 02D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A510377778/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=84614896. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. Bartusiak, Marcia. "Book World: A year in orbit: Beautiful views and burned-out light bulbs." Washington Post, 3 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A513118920/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9538b823. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.

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