NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Available for Interviews before One-Year Space Station Mission

News provided by

Mar 03, 2015, 03:11 ET

WASHINGTON, March 3, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who is making final preparations for his launch this month to spend a year living and working on the International Space Station, will be available for live satellite interviews from 5:30 to 7 a.m. EDT Monday, March 9.

Kelly will participate from Moscow as he completes the final weeks of his training. The interviews will be preceded at 5 a.m. by a video on NASA Television highlighting his mission training and previous spaceflights.

To schedule an interview, reporters should contact Seth Marcantel at 281-792-7515 no later than 2 p.m. Friday, March 6. Media participating in the live shots must tune to NTV-3. Satellite tuning information is available at:

http://go.nasa.gov/1pOWUhR

Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will spend a year on the space station to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space. Data from the expedition will be used to determine whether there are ways to further reduce the risks on future long-duration missions to an asteroid and eventually Mars.

The crew will support several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science aboard the orbiting laboratory. Data and samples will be collected throughout the year from a series of studies involving Scott and his twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly. The studies will compare data from the genetically identical Kelly brothers to identify any subtle changes caused by spaceflight.

Kelly, Kornienko and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, also of Roscosmos, will launch to the station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft at 3:42 p.m. EDT on March 27 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The three will join Expedition 43 Commander Terry Virts of NASA, Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) and cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos. Kelly and Kornienko will remain aboard the space station until March 2016.

Kelly was born in Orange, New Jersey, and earned degrees from the State University of New York Maritime College and the University of Tennessee. Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy captain, has accumulated more than 8,000 flight hours in more than 40 different aircraft. He was selected as an astronaut in 1996 and piloted space shuttle Discovery during the STS-103 mission in 1999 and served as commander for the STS-118 mission in 2007. He went on to serve as Expedition 26 commander for his first long-duration space station mission in 2010. He has spent nearly 180 days in space.

Kelly's official biography is available at:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/kellysj.html

Follow Kelly on social media at:

https://twitter.com/stationcdrkelly

http://instagram.com/stationcdrkelly

For information about the one-year mission on the International Space Station, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1zACDLM

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO

SOURCE NASA