Space Station 'One Year Mission' set to start on Friday, helping to pave the way to Mars

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Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer

Thursday, March 26, 2015, 8:14 PM - Friday, March 27, 2015 promises to be an important day in human space exploration, as it marks the beginning the One Year Mission - the longest-duration mission so far for crew members on the International Space Station.

In advance of the launch, the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft was rolled out to the launch platform at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, ready for its three-man crew and a scheduled launch time of 3:42pm ET, on Friday, March 27.

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

In the hours leading up to that launch, Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko, and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, have been suiting up to board the Soyuz capsule, where they will strap in for a six-hour speed flight to the International Space Station. Once they arrive, they will join NASA's Terry Virts, now in command of the station, along with Roscosmos' Anton Shkaplerov and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, for Expedition 43.

Fast-forward to September of this year, and Padalka will be strapping back into that same Soyuz spacecraft for the return to Earth. However, Kornienko and Kelly won't be going with him. They will be giving their seats on that return flight to Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen and singer/songwriter/actress Sarah Brightman, who will be ending a 10-day mission to "promote peace and sustainable development on earth and from space."

Far from stranding Kornienko and Kelly on the station, though, this act of giving Mogensen and Brightman their seats is part of a carefully orchestrated plan to allow the two men to stay on the station for a total of 342 days - the longest anyone has stayed on the station so far. Cosmonauts on board Space Station Mir stayed for longer periods of time than that, with the longest being 438 days, by Valeri Polyakov, from January 1994 to March 1995. These Russian missions were also to test the effects of long-duration space flight on the human body (and mind), so the One Year Mission is picking up where those Mir scientists left off.

The One Year Mission

In all, NASA and Roscosmos have planned an impressive battery of experiments for the two men over the next year - 18 total for the both of them, with another 10 added on for Scott Kelly, as part of NASA's Twins Study.

As Scott Kelly undergoes an array of tests on the station, NASA will have an experimental 'control' on Earth, in the form of Scott's twin brother, Mark. With Scott and Mark being identical twins, the researchers come as close as they can get to studying the same person (at least physically) being both in space and on Earth at the exact same time. A comparison of Scott's and Mark's results from these tests should provide researchers a wealth of data on the effects of spaceflight - the low-g environment, the increased exposure to radiation, the confined spaces, etc - can affect the human body. This will not only help us better understand how the body works, to potentially improve medical research and procedures here on Earth, but it will also help us to understand what spacefarers will endure on long-distance missions, such as the flight to Mars and back.

Interested in seeing exactly what this battery of experiments will be - all 28 of them? You're in luck.

In addition to NASA's One Year Mission and Twins Study websites, Jason Davis, with The Planetary Society, has compiled a comprehensive list on his blog. He even went so far as to summarized the basic questions being asked in these experiments, and he provided an idea of what data and samples they'll be gathering to answer those questions. Check it out!

EXTENDED LAUNCH COVERAGE: Watch the launch of Soyuz TMA-16M, broadcast live over the web via NASA TV, starting at 2:30 pm EDT!