Yearlong spacemen embrace fresh, frigid air back on Earth
In a NASA interview before heading home to Houston, Kelly said it was "amazing" to feel the cold air when the hatch of his Soyuz capsule popped open after touchdown.
"Congratulations on your record," former cosmonaut and Kazak space agency chief Talgat Musabayev said at a welcoming ceremony.
Minutes after emerging from their capsule, they were whisked in chairs to a medical tent where they did their best to stand, walk, jump, navigate obstacles — everything an astronaut might need to do immediately upon arriving at Mars.
NASA aims to put astronauts on the red planet in the 2030s, but first wants to know how the body — and mind — will fare during the 2½-year expedition.
Kelly looked fit as he emerged from the Soyuz capsule on the remote steppes of central Asia, pumping his fist and giving a thumbs-up.
The welcoming committee includes Scott's two daughters, ages 21 and 12; his girlfriend who's been chronicling his mission as a NASA public affairs officer at Johnson; and his sister-in-law, former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Mark's wife.
On this flight alone, the pair traveled 144 million miles through space — the average distance between Earth and neighbor Mars — and exposed to cosmic radiation.
Six months is the typical space station stint; that was the mission length for Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, who piloted Kelly and Kornienko to a safe Soyuz touchdown.