Astronaut Scott Kelly prepares to return to Earth after year in space
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NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is closing the door on a space mission that has spanned 340 days.
Kelly and his roommate for nearly a year, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, will check out of the International Space Station Tuesday night.
By the time their Russian capsule lands in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, the pair will have circled the world 5,440 times and experienced 10,880 orbital sunrises and sunsets.
Kelly, who began his mission to the International Space Station on March 27, 2015, has been an active tweeter this past year, sending nearly 1000 photos from space to his Twitter account, including breathtaking photos of sunrises, blizzards and other storms.
Tuesday morning, Kelly tweeted photos of his final sunrise from the International Space Station.
Kelly said the hardest part about serving a year in space was being away from loved ones.
"The hardest part is being isolated from people on the ground who are important to you," he said.
Even still, Kelly said it will be hard to return to Earth.
Check out today's undocking and landing timeline as NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov get ready to return home. http://go.nasa.gov/21AEyUF
Posted by International Space Station on Tuesday, March 1, 2016
At 8:05pm ET, the Soyuz spacecraft will detach from the space station carrying NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly and crew and...
Posted by International Space Station on Tuesday, March 1, 2016
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