NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is getting ready to come home after spending a longer stretch in orbit than any other American in history, but he says he could stay in space for double that time.
“I could go another 100 days. I could go another year if I had to. It would just depend on what I was doing and if it made sense, although I do look forward to getting home here next week,” he told journalists today during a space-to-ground news conference.
The next few days will cap off a 340-day tour of duty on the International Space Station, which is aimed at studying how long-duration spaceflight could affect astronauts during even longer trips to Mars and back.
Kelly and his fellow year-in-spacer, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, are due to come back to Earth in a Soyuz capsule along with Russian crewmate Sergey Volkov on March 1.
