by Scott Kelly
From their position in helicopters nearby, the rescue forces count down over the comm system the distance to go until landing.
“Open your mouth,” a voice reminds us in Russian. If we don’t keep our tongues away from our teeth, we could bite them off on impact. When we are only five meters from the ground, the rockets fire for the “soft” landing (this is what it’s called, but I know from experience that the landing is anything but soft). I feel the hard crack of hitting the Earth in my spine. My head bounces and slams into the seat, the sensation of a car accident. We are down. We have landed with the hatch pointing straight up rather than on one side, which is rare. We will wait a few minutes longer than usual while the rescue crew brings a ladder to extract us from the burned capsule.
When the hatch opens, the Soyuz fills with the rich smell of air and the bracing cold of winter. It smells fantastic. We bump fists.
After Sergey gets out of the capsule, I’m surprised to find that I can unstrap myself, pull myself out of my seat, and reach the hatch overhead, despite the fact that gravity feels like a crushing force. I remember coming back from STS-103 after only eight days and feeling like I weighed a thousand pounds. Now, with a little help from the rescue forces, I pull myself entirely out of the capsule to sit on the edge of the hatch and take in the landscape all around. The sight of so many people—maybe a couple hundred—is startling. It feels indescribably strange to see more than a handful of people at a time, and the sight is overwhelming. I pump my fist in the air. I breathe, and the air is rich with a fantastic sweet smell, a combination of charred Soyuz and honeysuckle. The Russian space agency insists on having the rescue crew help us down from the capsule and deposit us into nearby camp chairs for examination by doctors and nurses. We follow the Russians’ rules when we travel with them, but I wish they would let me walk away from the landing. I feel sure I could. My flight surgeon Steve Gilmore is there, and I’m reminded of what his medical care and friendship have meant to me—over the years, he and other flight surgeons have worked tirelessly to keep me on flight status and kept me flying safely when it would have been easier to declare me unqualified. I notice Chris Cassidy, the chief astronaut, and my friend Joel Montalbano, the deputy ISS program manager. Near Sergey and Misha, I recognize Sergey’s father, a former cosmonaut, and Valery Korzun. In the distance, I see the rescue force troops, some of whom I first met in Russa in 2000 during winter survival training and whose dedication I have come to appreciate and rely on. I notice Misha smiling and waving at them, and I’m certain he’s thinking of his father, who was once one of them.
Chris hands me a satellite phone. I dial Amiko’s cell—I know she’ll be at mission control in Houston along with Samantha (Charlotte watched from home in Virginia Beach), my brother, and close friends watching the live feed on the huge screens.
“How was it?” Amiko asks.
“It was fucking medieval,” I say. “But effective.”
I tell her I feel fine. If I were on the first crew to reach the surface of Mars, just now touching down on the red planet after a yearlong journey and a wild-hot descent through its atmosphere, I feel like I would be able to do what needed to be done. One of the most important questions of my mission has been a simple yes or no: could you get to work on Mars? I wouldn’t want to have to build a habitat or hike ten miles, but I know I could take care of myself and others in an emergency, and that feels like a triumph.
I tell Amiko I’ll see her soon, and for the first time in a year that’s true.
Epilogue: Life on Earth
I’VE BEEN ASKED often what we learned from my year in space. I think sometimes people want to hear about one profound scientific discovery or insight, something that struck me (or the scientists on the ground) like a cosmic ray through my brain at some climactic moment during my mission. I don’t have anything like that to offer. The mission that I prepared for was, for the most part, the mission I flew. The data is still being analyzed as I write this, and the scientists are excited about what they are seeing so far. The genetic differences between my brother and me from this year could unlock new knowledge, not only about what spaceflight does to our bodies but also about how we age here on Earth. The Fluid Shifts study Misha and I did is promising in terms of improving astronauts’ health on long missions. The studies I did on my eyes—which don’t seem to have degraded further during this mission—could help solve the mystery of what causes damage to astronauts’ vision, as well as helping us to understand more about the anatomy and disease processes of the eye in general.
Results and scientific papers will continue to emerge over years and decades based on the four hundred experiments we conducted over the year. Misha and I were a sample size of only two—we need to see many more astronauts stay in space for longer periods of time before we can draw conclusions about what we experienced. I do feel as though I’ve made discoveries—it’s just that those discoveries can’t entirely be separated from what I’ve learned from my other missions in space, other periods of my life, other challenges, other lessons.
As much as I worked on scientific experiments, I think I learned at least as much about practical issues of how to conduct a long-range exploration mission. This is what crew members on ISS are always doing—we are not just solving problems and trying to make things better for our own spaceflights, but also studying how to make things better for the future. So even the smallest decisions I made or negotiations I undertook with the ground were directed toward larger questions of resource management. And the larger struggles of my mission—most notably, CO2 management and upkeep of the Seedra—will have a larger impact on future missions on the space station and future space vehicles. NASA has agreed to manage CO2 at a much lower target level, and better versions of carbon dioxide scrubbers are being developed that will one day replace the Seedra and make life better for future space travelers, and I’m thankful for that.
Personally, I’ve learned that nothing feels as amazing as water. The night my plane landed in Houston and I finally got to go home, I did exactly what I’d been saying all along I would do: I walked in the front door, walked out the back door, and jumped into my swimming pool, still in my flight suit. The sensation of being immersed in water for the first time in a year is impossible to describe. I’ll never take water for granted again. Misha says he feels the same way.
I’ve been assigned to a spaceflight or in training for one practically nonstop since 1999. It will be an adjustment to no longer be planning my life this way. I have a chance to reflect on what I’ve learned.
I’ve learned that I can be really calm in bad situations. I’ve known this about myself since I was a kid, but it has definitely been reinforced.
I’ve learned to better compartmentalize, which doesn’t mean forgetting about feelings but instead means focusing on the things I can control and ignoring what I can’t.
I’ve learned from watching my mother train to become a police officer that small steps add up to giant leaps.
I’ve learned how important it is to sit and eat with other people. While I was in space, I saw on TV one day a scene of people sitting down to eat a meal together. The sight moved me with an unexpected yearning. I suddenly longed to sit at a table with my family, just like the people on the screen, gravity holding a freshly cooked meal on the table’s surface so we could enjoy it, gravity holding us in our seats so we could rest. I had asked Amiko to buy a dining room table; she did, and sent me a picture of it. Two days after landing, I was sitting at the head of the new table, a beautiful meal my friend Tilman had sent over spread out on it, my family gathered around me. Amiko, Samantha, Charlotte, Mark, Gabby, Corbin, my father. I could see them all without moving my head. It was just how I’d pictured it. At one point in the after-dinner conversation, Gabby pointed urgently at Mark, then me, back and forth, back and forth. She was pointing out that Mark and I were both making exactly the same gesture, our hands folded on top of our heads. I’ve learned what it means to be together with family
again.
I’ve learned that most problems aren’t rocket science, but when they are rocket science, you should ask a rocket scientist. In other words, I don’t know everything, so I’ve learned to seek advice and counsel and to listen to experts. I’ve learned that an achievement that seems to have been accomplished by one person probably has hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people’s minds and work behind it, and I’ve learned that it’s a privilege to be the embodiment of that work.
I’ve learned that Russian has a more complex vocabulary for cursing than English does, and also a more complex vocabulary for friendship.
I’ve learned that a year in space contains a lot of contradictions. A year away from someone you love both strains the relationship and strengthens it in new ways. I’ve learned that climbing into a rocket that may kill me is both a confrontation of mortality and an adventure that makes me feel more alive than anything else I’ve ever experienced. I’ve learned that this moment in American spaceflight is a crossroads where we can either renew our commitment to push farther out, to build on our successes, to keep doing harder and harder things—or else lower our sights and compromise our goals.
I’ve learned that grass smells great and wind feels amazing and rain is a miracle. I will try to remember how magical these things are for the rest of my life.
I’ve learned that my daughters are remarkable and incredibly resilient people, and that I have missed a piece of each of their lives that I can never get back.
I’ve learned that following the news from space can make Earth seem like a swirl of chaos and conflict, and that seeing the environmental degradation caused by humans is heartbreaking. I’ve also learned that our planet is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and that we’re lucky to have it.
I’ve learned that voluntary spinal taps are not much fun.
I’ve learned a new empathy for other people, including people I don’t know and people I disagree with. I’ve started letting people know I appreciate them, which can sometimes freak them out at first. It’s a bit out of character. But it’s something I’m glad to have gained and hope to keep.
—
I TOLD my flight surgeon Steve I felt well enough to get right to work immediately upon returning from space, and I did, but within a few days I felt much worse. This is what it means to have allowed my body to be used for science. I will continue to be a test subject for the rest of my life.
A few months later, I felt distinctly better. I will continue to participate in the Twins Study as Mark and I age. Science is a slow-moving process, and it may be years before any great understanding or breakthrough is reached from the data. Sometimes the questions science asks are answered by other questions. This doesn’t particularly bother me—I will leave the science up to the scientists. For me, it’s worth it to have contributed to advancing human knowledge, even if it’s only a step on a much longer journey.
I’ve been traveling the country and the world talking about my experiences in space. It’s gratifying to see how curious people are about my mission, how much children instinctively feel the excitement and wonder of spaceflight, and how many people think, as I do, that Mars is the next step.
In the summer, my father was diagnosed with throat cancer and began receiving radiation therapy. In October, he became much more ill. One evening, Amiko got a phone call from him, which wasn’t unusual. He had depended on her support a great deal while I was in space, and they had continued to talk often. But that day, he didn’t want anything in particular.
“I just wanted to let you know how much I love you, sweetheart,” he told her. “I’m just so glad you and Scott have each other. You’ve accomplished so much together, and all the stuff you’ve been through—it was all worth it.” Amiko thought this was out of character for him, but she said he sounded much better than he had in a while. A few days later, he took a turn for the worse, and while Mark, Amiko, and I were all out of the country, he died in the intensive care unit with my daughter Samantha by his side, four and a half years after my mother. I was grateful Samantha could be there with him.
I’m convinced he lived to see my mission through and to celebrate my return. It was a big deal to him to support Mark and me and to celebrate our accomplishments, and he was proud of all of his granddaughters, whom he adored. Like most people, he had mellowed with age, and we had a much improved relationship toward the end of his life.
In my computer, I have a file of all the images my crewmates and I took on the International Space Station during the time I was there. When I’m trying to remember some detail from the mission, sometimes I click through them. It can be overwhelming, because there are so many of them—half a million—but often a picture of a specific person on a specific day will bring back a flood of sense memory, and I will suddenly remember the smell of the space station, or the laughter of my crewmates, or the texture of the quilted walls inside my CQ.
One night, I click through the images late at night after Amiko is asleep: an image of Misha and Sergey in the Russian service module, smiling, getting ready for a Friday night dinner; an image of Samantha Cristoforetti running on the treadmill on the wall, grinning; an image of a purple-and-green aurora that I took in the middle of the night; an image of the eye of a hurricane taken from above; an image of a dirty filter vent just before I threw it away, containing a snarl of dust, lint, and one really long blond hair that must have come from Karen Nyberg, who left the station more than a year before I got there; a series of images of the connectors on the Seedra Terry and I took while we were in the process of fixing it so the ground could see how it was looking; an image of an iPad floating in the Cupola displaying a snapshot of a newborn baby I don’t know, majestic cloud formations visible below; an image of Tim Peake preparing his spacesuit for his first spacewalk, the Union Jack visible on the shoulder of the suit, a huge boyish grin on his face; a picture of Kjell flying through the U.S. lab like Superman; a picture of Gennady and me chatting in Node 1, just enjoying the moment and each other’s company. A year is made up of a million of these, and I could never have captured them all.
One image that doesn’t exist in my computer but that I will always remember is the view from the Soyuz window as Sergey, Misha, and I backed away from the International Space Station. As well as I know the inside of the station, I’ve only seen the outside a handful of times. It’s a strange sight, glinting in the reflected sunlight, as long as a football field, its solar arrays spread out more than half an acre. It’s a completely unique structure, assembled by spacewalkers flying around the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour in a vacuum, in extremes of temperature of plus and minus 270 degrees, the work of fifteen different nations over eighteen years, thousands of people speaking different languages and using different engineering methods and standards. In some cases the station’s modules never touched one another while on Earth, but they all fit together perfectly in space.
As we backed away, I knew I would never see it again, this place where I’d spent more than five hundred days of my life. We will never have a space station like this again in my lifetime, and I will always be grateful for the part I’ve played in its life. In a world of compromise and uncertainty, this space station is a triumph of engineering and cooperation. Putting it into orbit—making it work and keeping it working—is the hardest thing that human beings have ever done, and it stands as proof that when we set our minds to something hard, when we work together, we can do anything, including solving our problems here on Earth.
I also know that if we want to go to Mars, it will be very, very difficult, it will cost a great deal of money, and it may cost human lives. But I know now that if we decide to do it, we can.
Acknowledgments
Amiko said to me once, “Teamwork makes the dream work,” and spaceflight is the biggest team sport there is, so spending any amount of time in space takes the support and collaboration of thousands of people. From the instructors who train us to the flight controllers and flight directors wor
king in mission control to my friends and family keeping me connected to my life on Earth—there isn’t enough space in this book to thank them all, so one collective “thank you” will have to suffice.
Above all, I have to recognize my partner—and now fiancée—Amiko Kauderer. I hope the pages of this book make clear what it meant to me that she was with me day by day throughout this journey, experiencing together its challenges and triumphs and its highs and lows. I’ve tried to express what a crucial role she’s played in this mission’s success, but words can never express the role she has played in my life these last eight years. Thank you, Amiko.
My kids, Samantha and Charlotte, have sacrificed much for their dad. From missed birthdays and holidays to the general disruption of their lives, accepting the inherent risks of spaceflight and sharing their dad with the world. They were brave, adaptable, and resilient. I appreciate and am proud of how you handled it all with strength and grace. Thank you.
My brother, Mark, has been by my side since my birth, challenged and supported me throughout our lives. Having also flown in space, he understood the thrill, the trials, and the hardships of this journey. His support and counsel I’ve come to rely on and much appreciate. Thank you.
My parents endured the emotional toll of watching their sons launch into space and await our safe return to Earth—a total of seven times for my mother, Patricia, and eight times for my father, Richard. Thank you to my mother also for showing me by her example what it took to achieve a lofty goal.