Twins Offer to Conduct Gutsy Space Experiment For NASA

Mark and Scott Kelly are twins, and also NASA astronauts. On Wednesday the men announced that they will be taking part in an experiment that will involve one of them remaining in space for one year while the other stays on Earth.

Beginning next spring, Scott Kelly will undergo a one-year stint aboard the International Space Station while his brother, Mark Kelly, will remain on Earth and receive medical tests before, during, and after Scott's time on the ISS. The yearlong experiment will be a record for time spent in space by an American.

The goal of the experiment is for researchers to understand the effects of prolonged weightlessness, and the fact that Mark and Scott are identical twins is likely to provide an accurate analysis. Mark is a retired astronaut, which is why Scott will be making the journey into space.

But Scott will not only be traveling into space for a year. He also volunteered for spinal taps in orbit to explore new medical territory, so he will have a pressure sensor drilled into his skull in order for the researchers to study the effect on vision impairment suffered by those partaking in long-term space missions.

"As a test pilot, I like to push the envelope on things and, in this case, I feel like I'm maybe trying to push the envelope on data collection as well," said Scott Kelly, in this SF Gate news article. "No second thoughts - I'm actually getting kind of excited about the whole idea as we get closer."

Scott has already spent five months aboard the ISS back in 2010, so this is nothing new for him. NASA researchers are appreciative that the Kelly's (particularly Scott) are willing to be the "guinea pigs" for this experiment because more information is needed to determine the effects of long-term space missions on astronauts. NASA plans to execute a mission to a nearby asteroid and the Mars missions are likely to begin in 2030 - two adventures that require as much relative information as possible.

NASA has selected ten proposals for the study that will begin next spring. Topics involving the immune system, gut bacteria, reaction time, fluid shift in space, DNA and RNA molecular science, hardening of arteries, and others will also be involved in the experiment. NASA will give these researchers $1.5 million over the course of three years.