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This article was published on 2 March 2016 at 20:54.
They returned at last. Three astronauts on the International Space Station, ISS, landed tonight at 1:42 Italian time in Kazakhstan, as expected. Nothing fancy, now the six-month shifts are normal and departures and landings from the ISS are normal, but this time there is something special that is worth pointing out.
Two of the three astronauts returned on our planet today, American Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko, have been on the ISS for a year, 340 days to be precise. As always in these cases just landed were substantially extracted from sacrificatissima Russian space capsule, Vostok, which brought them back to the ground, picked her up and laid on special chairs, toddler bed for sunbathing. Their muscles and bones in fact, after a year’s absence of weight, must be treated with the utmost care because they are very weak, despite the vigorous exercise program where the astronauts through fine staying in the ISS are subjected.
A year in space is so, even if the record is not, and still held by the astronauts of the old Russian Mir space station 20 years ago, but this time there is a reason of particular interest. Scott Kelly fact has an identical twin who remained on Earth at this time. The two were continuously monitored over the past 340 days and indeed have been studied for a year even before the flight, to verify their state of health and whether and to what extent do. Now they will be studied for another year. The occasion is indeed too good, do not miss to see if and how they evolved in a different way the bodies of the twins in these 340 days, a trial never accomplished before.
As for the astronauts taken as individuals, both the US that the Russian, now will determine how they feel, how they react and if their mental capacities are varied with this long period in the ISS. It is not only the lack of weight, but also the severe competition, the constant viewing of the Earth, the continuous alternation of sunrises and sunsets in the 90 minutes when the station makes one revolution around the Earth. There were no changes in their ability to orient themselves and move? They have problems with blood circulation, given that the heart for a year has been much favored in his task by the fact that the blood, in orbit, weighs nothing, while here we go on to the ground kilogram per liter, and we have several liters circle. These are just some of the medical and psychological problems, but here we have the possibility of a confrontation, with the twin was on the ground, almost a double-check: the genes of the two brothers, the chromosomes, in the last instance the DNA has undergone changes? The immune system, by comparing the two, as it comes out, perhaps weakened by the time spent in space?
Over the last year, Kelly and Kornienko have seen into and out of other 13 astronauts and Kelly did the photographer, sending beautiful pictures of the Earth, the gardener, cultivating “spatial” vegetables and zinnias in weightlessness, came out 3 times from the station for maintenance missions and has worked on many of the nearly 400 scientific experiments act in Iss.
He brought back seeds from the station, they will be distributed to various American schools because kids can grow flowers and vegetables and see if the seeds that were in space, they too , growing up in a manner different from those on earth. All very useful, ultimately, to accumulate experience for the long journey, and maybe living, man on Mars.
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