Year in space challenging but doable, astronaut says

Spending a full year in the cramped confines of the International Space Station poses psychological and physical challenges, but two crewmen set for launch in 2015 are ready to go. When astronaut Scott Kelly told his 9-year-old daughter he was going to spend a full year aboard the International Space Station, she exclaimed "awesome!"

When cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko told his wife the same thing, "she started crying."But both men said Wednesday they were looking forward to blasting off in March 2015 and spending a full year in orbit, serving as medical guinea pigs to help scientists learn more about the long-term physical and psychological impacts of extended, confined flights in the weightless environment of space.

Astronaut Scott Kelly, floating in the multiwindow cupola during a previous long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station. Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko plan to spend a full year aboard the outpost in 2015-16.

 (Credit: NASA)

"I personally think our ultimate destination, at least for a long time in our planet's future, is getting to Mars," Kelly told CBS News. "And I look at this as a step towards that." Alexey Krasnov, director of manned space operations for Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, agreed, saying through a translator "I hope this one-year duration expedition will help us achieve these tasks."A flight to Mars, possibly in the 2030s, is expected to take seven to 10 months, followed by a lengthy stay in the reduced gravity of the Red Planet and then an equally long trip back to Earth.

Space station astronauts and cosmonauts typically spend up to six months aboard the international lab complex, and researchers are eager to find out how the adaptation process might change -- and what might need to be done about it -- for longer-duration missions.

The spaceflight duration record holder is cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who spent 438 days aboard the Russian Mir space station in 1994 and 1995. The U.S. record for the longest single spaceflight is held by astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who spent 215 days in space aboard the International Space Station in 2006-07.

But the upcoming flight with Kelly and Kornienko will set a new record for NASA and it will be the first to employ the full range of modern medical protocols and research procedures over a 12-month period.

Igor Ushakov, a senior medical researcher with the Russian space program, said astronauts and cosmonauts already run a 7 percent risk of having a problem that requires medical care after a six-month flight."So the risk will double, so for at least one of the two it will be 14 percent for the yearlong expedition," he said. "I would like to knock on wood that it won't happen, the worst scenario. But the risk is increased, that's for sure."

Even so, he reassured reporters, "the cosmonauts who were in space for a year or more, they all are alive and well today."

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