What a Year in Space Did to Scott Kelly
An unprecedented and illuminating study monitored identical twins, one in space and one on Earth.Marina Koren Apr 11, 2019 Scott Kelly rests after the landing of the Soyuz space capsule.Kirill Kudryavtsev / AP In the debate over whether human beings should set off to other worlds beyond Earth, one of the most compelling cons is this: Our bodies don’t like it. Few people know this better than Scott Kelly, the NASA astronaut who spent nearly a year on the International Space Station from 2015 to 2016. Like other astronauts, Kelly served as a test subject in the study of space travel’s effects on the human body. Unlike other astronauts, Kelly has an identical twin, Mark, an astronaut himself. This gave researchers an uncommon opportunity to monitor the two brothers as they lived in two very different environments—one on Earth and the other 250 miles above it. According to their results,…