ANALYSIS: Record-breaking woman US astronaut set to return to Earth

Issued on: 06/02/2020 - 03:56Modified: 06/02/2020 - 06:55  GMT/ZULU

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Almaty (Kazakhstan) 

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, France24 Science News Analysts

US astronaut Christina Koch is set to return to Earth Thursday having shattered the spaceflight record for female astronauts by spending almost a year aboard the International Space Station.

Koch of NASA is expected to touch down in the Kazakh steppes with colleagues Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian space agency at 0912 GMT after 328 days in space.

The 41-year-old Michigan-born engineer by training surpassed the previous record set for a single spaceflight by a woman -- 289 days, held by NASA veteran Peggy Whitson -- on December 28, 2019.

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Koch had already made history by that point after she became one half of the first-ever all-woman spacewalk along with NASA counterpart Jessica Meir in October.

Koch told NBC on Tuesday that she would "miss microgravity" as she answered questions from journalists ahead of her three-and-a-half hour journey back to Earth.

"It's really fun to be in a place where you can just bounce around between the ceiling and the floor whenever you want," she said, smiling as she twisted her body around the ISS.

- 'Make space for women' -

Koch called three-time flyer Whitson "a heroine of mine" and a "mentor" in the space programme after she surpassed the 59-year-old's record.

She also spoke of her desire to "inspire the next generation of explorers."

Koch's return comes after an advert produced by the skincare brand Olay ran during an intermission in the American football Super Bowl with a call to "make space for women."

The advert featured NASA astronaut Nicole Stott and saw the company promise to donate up to $500,000 to the nonprofit Women Who Code, which works with young women seeking careers in tech and scientific fields.

This year's Super Bowl was watched by over 100 million people while advert space costs more than $5 million for a 30-second commercial.

The first woman in space was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova whose spaceflight in 1963 is still the only solo mission carried out by a woman.

But the cosmonauts Russia has sent to the ISS since expeditions began in 2000 have all been men with the exception of Yelena Serova's launch in 2014.

Both Tereshkova and Serova are now lawmakers in the Russian parliament, where they represent the ruling United Russia party.

Unlike Koch, whose stay aboard the ISS was extended, Parmitano and Skvortsov are rounding off regular six-month missions.

Parmitano handed over command of the ISS to Roscosmos' Oleg Skripochka on Tuesday.

The 43-year-old Italian posted regular shots of the Earth while aboard, highlighting the plight of the Amazon rainforest and poetically describing the Alps as "like a spinal column, never bending to time."

Four male cosmonauts have spent a year or longer in space as part of a single mission with Valery Polyakov's 437 days the overall record.

Scott Kelly holds the record for a NASA astronaut, posting 340 days at the ISS before he returned home in 2016.

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Kelly and Kornienko begin year-long space trip

by Biodun Iginla, BBC News

1 our ago

US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have arrived for the start of a 12-month tour of duty on the International Space Station.

It will be the longest continuous stay anyone has had aboard the 400km-high (250 mile) orbiting platform.
Their Soyuz capsule docked successfully at 01:33 GMT on Saturday, Nasa said.
Scientists hope to get a keener idea of the effects on the human body of living in microgravity for extended periods.
The space agencies say the data will be invaluable as they plan towards eventually mounting a mission to Mars.
Mr Kelly and Mr Kornienko launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan in the Soyuz vehicle at 01:42 local time on Saturday (19:42 GMT Friday).
They were joined on the flight up by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, but his tour will only last the normal six months.
Although Mr Kelly and Mr Kornienko will set an endurance record for this space station, some of the stays aboard the old Russian Mir platform were much longer.
Four cosmonauts lived on Mir at various times for more than a year, with Valeri Polyakov spending a mammoth 437.7 days in orbit in 1994-95.

"The last time we had such a long duration flight was almost 20 years and of course all… scientific techniques are more advanced than 20 years ago,'' Mr Kornienko was quoted as saying by the AP wire service in the pre-launch press conference.
"And right now we need to test the capability of a human being to perform such long-duration flights. So this is the main objective of our flight - to test ourselves."
Mr Kelly added: "One of the differences here is that we're doing it as an international partnership, and if we're going to go beyond low-Earth orbit again, perhaps to Mars, because of the cost and the complexity it will most likely be an international mission, so we see this as a stepping stone to that."

Knowledge on how to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of living in zero-g has improved markedly since the Mir era, and the expectation is that Mr Kelly and Mr Kornienko will come back in a better shape than those early pioneers.
Programmed nutrition and exercise routines now prevent much of the bone density loss and muscle weakness that earlier astronauts used to experience.
However, there are other problems that doctors still need to study and understand. They have poor data on the effects on immune function, for example, and there is considerable concern about the damage spaceflight causes to the eyes. This is a newly recognised phenomenon, and appears to be related to the way fluid is redistributed in a weightless body.

Pressure is seen to build in the skull and on the optic nerve, and a large number of astronauts return to Earth complaining that their vision is not as good as when they went up.
By having Mr Kelly and Mr Kornienko onboard for a year, the agencies will be able to monitor how such complications progress beyond the normal six-month tour of duty.
Mr Kelly's situation is made more interesting by the fact that he has an identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, who was himself an astronaut before retiring from the US space agency in 2011.
The pair will be used in a comparative study: one in space, one on the ground.
Relativity theories predict that Scott Kelly should age less quickly than his brother while speeding above the Earth - but only by a few milliseconds over the year.