Pair to test limits of body during year at space station
American and Russian will be examined during 12 months orbiting the earth
Two men are about to spend a year at the orbiting International Space Station, in an experiment that will test the limits of the human body and mind.
American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 27, and they will stay until March 2016.
The trip marks the longest amount of time that two people will live continuously at the ISS, though a handful of Russian cosmonauts spent a year to 14 months at the Russian space station Mir in the 1990s.
Both Kelly and Kornienko are space veterans who have flown multiple missions to orbit, and each has already spent about six months at the space station.
Kelly said some things would be different this time. He will keep a personal journal, and also plans to do his first spacewalk, as part of ongoing efforts to reconfigure and repair the space station.
But he said he was concerned about radiation and living in zero gravity, particularly in terms of compromised immunity and bone and vision loss.
"I'm hopeful there is not a big cliff out there with regards to our ability to stay and live and work in space for longer periods of time," he said. "But we are not going to know that until we have actually done it," he added.