How scientists are using the Kelly twins during Scott Kelly’s year-long mission to ISS to learn how weightlessness effects the human body

Link here. Scott Kelly launches today to the station to begin the flight.

The article’s headline and initial focus on how the Kellys’ privacy rights might interfere with the research seems inappropriate. It is as if the author and Nature wanted to spin the story to force the Kellys to reveal private medical data they would prefer to keep private.

The real story the article tells is that an incredible wealth of knowledge about microgravity will be gained by this flight, because the Kellys are both participating. And depending on what is learned when their entire genomes are sequenced, we might also be able to study that fully as well.

NASA and the Russians have agreed to fly a two-person year long mission on ISS beginning in the spring of 2015.

It’s now official: NASA and the Russians have agreed to fly a two-person year long mission on ISS beginning in the spring of 2015.

NASA has denied that this agreement has any connection with the Sarah Brightman/Russian deal, but I still wonder. Either way, it is very good news. Not only will they finally be using ISS appropriately, a mission like this will generate some real excitement for space exploration that the repeated boring six month expeditions to ISS have failed to do. Even better would be to schedule a two year mission, simulating a journey to and from Mars.