Astronaut To Spend A Year In Orbit - Spokane, North Idaho News & Weather KHQ.com

KHQ.COM - Astronaut Scott Kelly will become the first U.S. astronaut to spend a year in space. He is volunteering to be a human guinea pig -- to help NASA collect detailed medical and psychological data about the effects of long term spaceflight on a human. He and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in 2015 and return to Earth in 2016.

He was on the space station when his twin brother Mark was struggling to deal with the trauma of his wife's shooting. Mark Kelly, now retired from the astronaut corps, is a married to former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords – and Scott could only offer long distance support to his twin brother when his wife was shot during in January 2011.