After spending 340 days on the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Alexandrovich Volkov returned to Earth on Wednesday, reported CBCnews. The Soyuz descent module, which is carrying the astronauts, landed in Kazakhstan as per scheduled. ScienceNews reported that Kelly and Kornienko left earth on March 27, 2015 to research the physiological effects of extended spaceflight.
Though Kelly is the only American astronaut to have stayed in a spaceship for this long, this was not the longest space sojourn in history. Russian astronaut Valeri Polyakov stayed on space station Mir for nearly 438 days in 1994 and 1995. Kelly has more than 9,39,000 followers on Twitter, and is extremely popular on Instagram for his incredible photography of earth and other celestial bodies from space.
According to a CNN report, the 52-year-old, who recently celebrated his birthday in space, was excited about his return though he said that he will miss the small, suspended nook that's become his home. "I've flown in space four times now, so it's going to be hard in that respect, but I certainly look forward to going back to Earth. I've been up here for a really long time and sometimes, when I think about it, I feel like I've lived my whole life up here," he said.
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