Two spacemen back home after year aloft: ‘We did it!’

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth on Wednesday after an unprecedented year in space for NASA, landing in barren Kazakhstan with a Russian cosmonaut who shared his whole space station journey.

Their Soyuz capsule parachuted onto the central Asian steppes and ended a science-rich mission at the International Space Station that began last March and was deemed a steppingstone to Mars.

It was a triumphant homecoming for Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko after 340 days in space. Kelly pumped his fist as he emerged from the capsule, then gave a thumbs up. He smiled and chatted with his doctors and others, as photographers crushed around him in the freezing cold.

“The air feels great out here,” NASA spokesman at the scene, Rob Navias, quoted Kelly as saying. “I have no idea why you guys are all bundled up.”

Clearly animated and looking well, he said he didn’t feel much different than he did after his five-month station mission five years ago.

Kelly and Kornienko had checked out of the space station 3 1/2 hours earlier. In total, they traveled 144 million miles through space, circled the world 5,440 times and experienced 10,880 orbital sunrises and sunsets during the longest single spaceflight by an American.

Kelly posted one last batch of sunrise photos Tuesday on Twitter, before quipping, “I gotta go!” His final tweet from orbit came several hours later: “The journey isn’t over. Follow me as I rediscover (hash) Earth!”

Piloting the Soyuz capsule home for Kelly, 52, and Kornienko, 55, was the much fresher and decade younger cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, whose space station stint lasted the typical six months.

The two yearlong spacemen faced a series of medical tests following touchdown. Before committing to even longer Mars missions, NASA wants to know the limits of the human body for a year, minus gravity.

As he relinquished command of the space station Monday, Kelly noted that he and Kornienko “have been up here for a really, really long time” and have been jokingly telling one another, “We did it!” and “We made it!”

“A year now seems longer than I thought it would be,” Kelly confided a couple weeks ago.

Not quite a year – 340 days to be precise, based on the Russian launch and landing schedule. But still record-smashing for NASA. Kelly’s closest U.S. contender trails him by 125 days. The world record of 438 days was set by a Russian doctor during the mid-1990s.