One-Year Crew Reaches Midway Point Aboard Station
View more pics from the One-Year Crew
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko clocked in for their 171st day aboard the International Space Station since arriving on March 27. The pair, set to come home March 3, 2016, are spending 342 days in space to help researchers better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long duration spaceflight. Read more about the One-Year Crew’s midway point.
Meanwhile, a pair of first-time astronauts transferred gear to Japan’s “Kounotori” HTV-5 cargo craft. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui conducted robotics work inserting an experiment platform into the side of the HTV-5 after the research it had delivered was installed on the outside of the Kibo lab module. The HTV-5 resupply mission will end Sept. 28 and the cargo craft will be released for a destructive entry over the Pacific Ocean.