American astronaut goes to new lengths

After taking more than 5,000 trips around the Earth, astronaut Scott Kelly is headed home tonight.

He entered a Soyuz capsule shortly after taking in the last of more than 10,000 sunrises and sunsets since he went into orbit nearly a year ago.

The end of his mission brings mixed emotions.

“I’m ready to come home. It’s not like I’m climbing the walls or anything to get out of here,” he said in his final press briefing.

Some of Kelly’s experiences during that year are amazing.

There are views of the lights of man, and the wonders of nature, storms thousands of miles away, and triumphs for Colorado’s favorite sports team.

Travis Schenck of the Space Foundation said, “He’s been in space for over 340 days but he’s actually tweeted over a thousand times.”

But this wasn’t just the greatest road trip ever, there was a scientific purpose as well.

The International Space Station, where astronaut Kelly has been spending the last nearly one year, isn’t designed to leave low-Earth orbit.

But part of the goal of his mission is to go way beyond low-Earth orbit, all the way to Mars.

Any mission to Mars and back will take around a year, so figuring out what that amount of time in space will do to a person is critical.

Schenck said some of the questions will be: “What will happen to your bones? What will happen to your eyes? What will happen to your different organs in micro-gravity?”

It’s the generation that makes up most of the visitors to the Space Foundation Visitor Center that will go to the red planet.

Students like Marquel Harvey, an 8th grader at High School Prep Academy in Colorado Springs. He told KRDO what he wants to do when if he gets to Mars.

“To have a lot of opportunities to research more and to find more life just in case something does happen to planet Earth, we might have a backup planet,” he said.

And they will be the ones to carry the torch even further – into the cosmos.

NASA has established a goal to go to Mars by 2030. The Orion heavy lift launcher that will take humans there is being built in Colorado.